


Hit Reset

by e_cat



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Cabeswater - Freeform, De-established Relationship, Established Relationship, M/M, Meddling Friends, Memory Loss, Non-meddling friends, Sorry Not Sorry, This is kind of evil of me, Unintentionally-meddling classmates, fair warning, ha - so incredibly non-compliant with TRK, psuedo-first meeting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2018-04-19 05:11:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 72,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4733897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/e_cat/pseuds/e_cat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam and Ronan have been dating for a couple of months now. Only... suddenly, neither of them know who the other is...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Running Backwards

**Author's Note:**

> Here are some things I like:
> 
> \- writing characters meeting for the first time  
> \- the Raven Cycle universe  
> \- characters slowly falling for each other  
> \- Pynch (obviously)  
> \- writing things that are slightly evil
> 
> This story is going to be a playground for all of these things. ;)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam finds himself in Cabeswater with no recollection of what he's been doing. As time goes on, things only get more confusing for him.
> 
> Mostly just sets up the story.

Adam blinked, disoriented. His face felt wet, and his eyes ached with tears. The thing was, he couldn’t remember why he was crying. He couldn’t even remember what he had been thinking of only moments before. He could remember that he _had_ been thinking, but the exact nature of the thoughts escaped him as easily as Noah’s last name had when Gansey had asked.

He shook his head and rubbed the moisture from his cheeks. _Last time I try doing a reading in Cabeswater,_ he thought.

It was ridiculous, really: he usually only had this sort of problem if he was scrying, and even then it wasn’t this dramatic. Sure, he couldn’t remember every detail, but he usually had a general idea what he had seen – whether he had been successful, at least.

Now he had been sitting on the ground crying long enough for his legs to go numb, and he couldn’t even remember why. He remembered beginning his reading, but he hadn’t been getting anywhere; the cards had been projecting too much about him and his thoughts about…

Well, that was the thing. Moments before, he had been sure that he had known. In fact, he could feel the place that the memory had been, just on the edge of his thoughts and ready to be brought to the center of his attention before it had suddenly vanished.

_Ronan…_ Adam thought finally, catching sight of The Lovers laid next to The Magician, the last card he remembered laying down. He had to have been thinking about Ronan, right? What else could he have been thinking about? It was a pretty good bet that he had been thinking about his boyfriend, Adam reasoned to himself.

Shaking his head slowly, Adam rubbed at his eyes with one hand while he picked up tarot cards with the other. Ronan was right, he thought, though he would never admit it: he needed more sleep. Cabeswater was going to have to wait.

Adam made his way out of the forest and towards his car, noting with a bit of relief that he’d only lost track of about a half hour, and he hadn’t gone anywhere during that time. He was more in control of himself than he had been when Cabeswater had sent him walking down the highway.

Still, this was a disturbing development. He would have to ask someone for advice on this. Stroking his thumb across the edge of the cards in his hand, he considered that he didn’t know who he would even go to for advice without Persephone. He doubted there was anyone quite like Persephone in the world, and he was certain he wouldn’t want to learn from anyone else.

With a heavy sigh, Adam climbed into the driver’s seat of his car. As he steered his car down the dusty asphalt leading the way into Henrietta, Adam had the most peculiar feeling that his mind was running _backwards._ Blinking away the odd sensation, he stared hard at the road before him. _I_ really _need to get more sleep,_ he thought.

After what felt like entirely too long, Adam arrived at the parking lot for St. Agnes. As he locked the car, he wondered idly if Ronan was going to come over tonight. He allowed his mind to drift to Ronan’s feelings for him, and his feelings for Ronan. Maybe it was something they should talk about. Maybe Adam should figure out how he felt –

Adam paused halfway to his door. _Did I lock the car?_ he wondered. He pressed his brain to remember, but he couldn’t seem to recall anything between getting out of the car and – _What was I just thinking about?_ He could remember that he had been thinking, but there was an absolute lack of hints as to what might have been on his mind.

Adam shook his head and walked back to the car. The door was, in fact, locked. Adam began his trek to his door once more. _I think Ronan might have a crush on me,_ he allowed himself to think, because it felt good, because he liked to think that at least there was _someone_ out there who thought he was something worth looking at.

Adam unlocked the door to his apartment. The room above St. Agnes was so small that it was nearly imaginary, but the lock on the door and the pervasively stale, hot air edged it just enough into reality that Adam could be proud that it was _his._

He moved to shut the door. _Did I lock the car?_ He squinted out to the parking lot. _I must have… probably._ He sighed. There was no point in going back. He was too tired. No one was going to steal _that_ car, anyways, and there was nothing inside worth taking. If Ronan stopped by, he might _put_ something in it, but locking the doors would hardly prevent that.

Double-checking that he had locked the door behind him, Adam ducked into the bathroom. His eyes stung a little still, and he splashed cold water on his face to wash off the dirt and salt. It felt so good that he considered taking a shower. He had a shift in the hot garage in the morning, though, and it felt too much like a waste to shower _before_ that. He settled for another splash of cool water on his face, and he rubbed his dripping hands around the back of his neck as a bonus. He couldn’t remember anything that had occupied his mind since getting out of the car.

_Maybe I should just get some sleep._ But that, too, seemed like a waste when there was homework that could be perfected in that time instead. Still, there was that peculiar sensation that his mind was an odometer that was running backwards – _I should probably sleep…_

Adam returned to the small main room and dropped onto the bed in what probably at least _resembled_ a normal sleeping position. Within seconds, he was asleep, and he dreamt a hundred, a thousand, a million memories of a boy with a smile more menacing than a tiger’s and a heart kinder than a summer breeze. When he awoke the next morning, he didn’t remember any of it.

Rather than pondering dreams he didn’t remember having, Adam went to work. And, after work, he did not think about anything or anyone that had occupied his sleep. Instead, he went back to his apartment and he took a quick shower that didn’t even begin to make him feel clean. And then he headed over to Monmouth, as he had promised Gansey, so that the two of them and Blue – and possibly Noah – could discuss what sorts of supernatural activity they should be expecting as they continued their search. When Adam jogged up the stairs to the factory apartment and opened the door, however, he came face to face with something that nothing else in their quest could have prepared him for.

Adam’s heart jumped in his chest, as though the muscle knew something that Adam did not. He shook his head and shut his eyes for a moment. When he reopened them and found the sight before him unchanged, his heart surged once more.

This didn’t make any sense. As though there had been any doubt, Adam’s eyes flicked to the miniature Henrietta. _Definitely Gansey’s apartment…_

Still, Adam couldn’t seem to reconcile this with the fact of the boy with the shaved head at the other end of the room. Adam took in the details as his heart pounded in his chest: raw fingers clenched into a fist that was overshadowed by dangling leather bands; a black raven perched atop the shoulder of a black tank top; two pairs of eyes studying him, one avian and the other untrusting.

Made entirely of height and sharp edges, the boy looked like a war waiting to happen; both the fire and the ashes it had left behind. He was too solid to be an apparition. He opened his savage mouth. “Who the fuck are you?”


	2. A Sound Unremembered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let's rewind a bit and look at Ronan's perspective prior to and through Adam showing up at Monmouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note 1) I always seem to forget the disclaimer... Oops. I liked the notes for last chapter, though, so I'll just put it here: Obviously, none of these characters belong to me; they belong to Maggie Stiefvater.
> 
> Note 2) I am so, so glad that I didn't make any sweeping declarations about updating every Saturday. It is no longer Saturday. I'll update again eventually. I might skip next week. We'll see how things play out. I am so acutely aware that this is only chapter two.
> 
> Note 3) The chapter titles, so far, are getting stolen from the text (slash vice versa). At some point, I think I will probably run out of interesting combinations of words to use for chapter titles. This terrifies me slightly.

Ronan was already having a bad day before some kid burst into Monmouth uninvited. For the first time in, well, ever, he’d woken up with no memory of his dreams. With no recollection of where he’d gotten the fraying Aglionby sweater in his hands, or why he would have even wanted it. It was the wrong size for him, and the smell of it, even, had unnerved him. The whole thing had given him the sense of having a word he couldn’t remember shadowing the edge of his thoughts: close enough to nag at him, but too far away to be of any use.

He’d offered the sweater to Chainsaw, and rather than picking at the loose threads as he’d expected, she’d nudged it around until it made a decent nest. Laughter had rung in his head, sharp and clear. A voice, robbed of nearly all identifying features, had echoed through his thoughts: “I bet she doesn’t do that with your clothes.”

He’d felt as though he was going to forget it, and he’d felt even more as though he didn’t want to, and so he’d written it down. Now it was a piece of paper in his pocket, and a sound in his head that he couldn’t remember anymore.

Of course, this had all happened around two o’clock in the morning. Gansey hadn’t been awake, and Ronan hadn’t been able to sleep, and so he’d had a couple of beers while he watched Chainsaw preen herself atop the worn-out sweater. Without meaning to, he’d fallen asleep for another hour, and had awoken with a headache that was either the result of an overly-ambitious hangover, or of too much repetition of a poor sleeping pattern. Probably the latter.

Since getting up, Ronan had been in an awful mood. Gansey had decided to give him space – after Ronan had slammed the door in his face. To be fair, though, Gansey should have known better than to start the conversation with “Did you have a fight with –?” This was the point at which Ronan had slammed the door, of course. Not that he needed Gansey to finish: with Gansey the one asking the question, he could only have been asking about Blue; Noah really wasn’t one for fighting. Ronan hadn’t wanted to hear Gansey’s disapproval over a fight he hadn’t had.

Now, hours later, Ronan had finally decided to reenter the main room, and only because Blue was supposed to be coming by to look at maps or something. Blue, he thought, was a lot like Chainsaw: small, curious, and perfectly willing to give him a minimal percentage of her attention. He was in an excellent mood to spend time with Chainsaw.

Blue was especially well-suited to Ronan’s current mood because she would distract Gansey, which meant that Ronan had to deal with even fewer people. Come to think of it, Noah, if he showed, would be preoccupied with Blue’s hair for a decent amount of time. Ronan could very clearly picture himself on one side of a map, and the three of them on the other: a thousand memories condensed into a single image. He wondered at the fact that he couldn’t ever remember feeling like an outsider in this group, though it would be so simple for him to act as one today. How was it that he had never felt _alone?_

As Ronan pondered this, however, the door to the apartment swung open, almost as if conjured by his thoughts of being alone. His first thought was: _Noah?_ But the person in the doorway, features hidden in his own shadow, was not quite the right shape for Noah.

The intruder hesitated. The door swung shut behind him, and now Ronan could begin to make out the elegant and not-quite-familiar features that made up the boy’s face. There was conflict in the curve of those cheekbones, in the point of that chin; something that warned _FRAGILE: HANDLE WITH CARE_ at the same time that it screamed _UNBREAKABLE._ Something about this fascinating combination somehow made Ronan want to lay his heart at this boy’s feet.

 _Stop it,_ Ronan told himself. His fingers squeezed into a fist. _Just because you’re gay doesn’t mean you can have a crush on some random guy who just_ broke in _to your apartment._

“Who the fuck are you?” Ronan snarled before he could convince himself to say something else. Something that would deconstruct his walls faster than he could think to reinforce them. Something like _Hi._

“Me?” the strange boy demanded. _“You’re_ the one in Gansey’s apartment for no apparent reason.” His voice was… different. He had the typical Henrietta accent, somewhere in there, but he seemed to be doing all he could to hide it. There was something oddly familiar about the way that two syllables that were meant to sound exactly the same ended up just a little bit different. Ronan fingered the paper in his pocket – it was like that, he thought: a sound unremembered.

“I’m Gansey’s goddamn roommate,” Ronan replied, perhaps a second too late, but with more than enough venom to make up for it.

“Roommate?” the boy repeated. “When did Gansey get a roommate?”

“When – I don’t have to answer your questions! You still haven’t told me who the fuck you are!”

“Adam!” Gansey called out gladly, jogging out of Noah’s room where he’d doing something that apparently involved getting a lot of ink on his hands. He stopped short, taking in the tension between them. “What?”

“When did you get a roommate?” the boy – Adam – asked at the same time that Ronan said, “When did you get a pet?”

Gansey’s eyes darted between them rapidly. “Huh?”

“Gansey, man, seriously, who is this guy?” Ronan asked. “He says he knows you.”

“Huh?” Gansey repeated.

Adam sighed. “Gansey, you didn’t say there was going to be someone else here,” he said. “Should the four of us be meeting at Nino’s instead?”

“The four of you?” Ronan demanded. He turned to Gansey. “No fucking way are you replacing me with – with _him!”_ Maybe it was true that this Adam character was far too attractive for his (or Ronan’s) own good, but that did _not_ mean that Ronan was going to let him step in and take all of his friends.

Gansey was staring with an open mouth. “Are – are you guys messing with me?”

“What?” Ronan growled. “Gansey, I don’t even fucking know this guy!”

“Adam?” Gansey tried somewhat desperately. “Please tell me you know who Ronan is?”

Adam crinkled his forehead. This did not make Ronan want to trace his fingers along every dip and curve of Adam’s face. “Gansey,” Adam said, “I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about. Am I supposed to?”

Gansey looked between them as though he’d been betrayed. Before Gansey could come up with a response, the door opened and Blue Sargent stepped through in all her sanity-restoring power. Ronan had never been more pleased to see her. She took one look at Gansey and said, “Who kicked _your_ puppy?” She glanced at the other two occupants of the room. “Hey, Ronan. Adam. Did you guys do something mean to Gansey?”

Ronan groaned loudly. “You know who this is?” he demanded, pointing at Adam.

Blue gave him a funny look. “Um, yes. Obviously.”

“Blue,” Adam said, “you know him?”

“Duh,” Blue said dismissively. “I don’t get it, guys. Did you swap shirts or something? You’re being weird.”

“Jane,” Gansey interjected very quietly, “I think we need to have a quick word in private. Something… very strange is going on here.”

“This concerns us,” Adam argued. “Don’t you think we should get to hear what you’re saying?”

Ronan added, “I agree with the skinny loser.”

“Hey!” Adam objected, voice raised. Ronan was impressed; he hadn’t figured on the kid having the balls to stand up to him. “I’m not –”

“Why don’t,” Gansey interrupted, “the two of you get to know each other while Jane and I have a brief discussion outside.” Blue’s eyes were wide and moving between them. Gansey steered her for the door, and this time, neither Adam nor Ronan objected; it was always a losing battle when Gansey had made up his mind like this.

Ronan turned to look at Adam as soon as the door shut. His mouth twisted into a smirk; he was already coming up with insults, bullets ready to be slid into the chamber. Before he could fire, though, Adam said, “God, why are you such an asshole?” His face was scowl on top of a glare. His lips were a straight line that Ronan wanted to bend.

Ronan, because he didn’t lie, replied, “Years of practice.”

“Ha,” Adam retorted, “I don’t think there are enough years in anyone’s lifetime for that.” Ronan just laughed; maybe he could get used to having Adam around, after all…


	3. A Reflection of Heartbreak

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gansey and Blue debate what they should do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter focuses on Blue's POV. I haven't written very much in Blue's POV before. I'll probably have to write more from her perspective, and Gansey's, because they know so much more about Adam and Ronan's past than Adam and Ronan do.

“It would seem that Adam and Ronan are suffering from some sort of… amnesia-esque affliction,” Gansey said as soon as he had finished _dragging_ Blue out of Monmouth.

“What on earth does that even mean?” Blue asked irritably.

“It seems to mean,” Gansey clarified, still falling back on his careful, political mask, “that each has absolutely no idea of who the other is.”

Blue squinted at him in disbelief. “Seriously? They don’t know each other? But they’re dating!” This didn’t make sense. Just two days ago, Adam had rested his head on Ronan’s shoulder for the first time in public. Just two days ago, Blue had mercilessly called them “the most nauseating couple ever.” Now, Blue felt sick for an entirely different reason. Dazed, she mumbled, “How on earth are we supposed to summarize an entire relationship?”

“Jane,” Gansey said gently, “considering that we don’t understand what’s caused this event, or what sorts of ramifications it may have, I think it might be best that we refrain from disclosing any details of their interactions prior to this point.”

It took her a moment to understand his phrasing, but when she did, her eyes snapped up to Gansey, expression frozen in shock. “But –”

Gansey shook his head. “No buts. This has Cabeswater written all over it; we’re not messing with it.”

Blue scrunched up her forehead. “What makes you think it’s Cabeswater?” she asked. “When has Cabeswater _ever_ done anything like this?”

Gansey rubbed his lower lip, considering her words – because Blue had a point, obviously. “It doesn’t matter _what’s_ caused it,” he said finally. “Especially if it’s not Cabeswater. There must be a reason for it. We can’t do anything until we know more about it.”

“Why the hell not?” Blue demanded. “This could be some sort of sinister thing! If we don’t tell them what’s going on, how on earth are we supposed to fix it?”

“I’m not suggesting that we don’t tell them that they know each other,” Gansey amended. “I’m sure they’ve already surmised as much. I’m simply… _requesting_ that we keep the precise nature of their previous relationship as… privileged information.”

Blue stared at him in disbelief. “You can’t be serious. You don’t want to tell them that they’re together?” 

“I think we should tell them as little as possible until we can figure out exactly what’s going on here,” he confirmed.

“You listen to me, Dick Gansey,” Blue growled, crossing her arms and triumphing silently over Gansey’s wince. “They were happy. Just think about that for a second: Adam Parrish and Ronan Lynch were _happy._ Do you really want to keep that from them?”

Gansey’s expression was pained. “Blue, we _can’t._ Do you understand? We don’t know what’s going on here. Telling them _anything_ could have a huge impact! We don’t know what could happen! We can’t mess around with something like this! There could be huge consequences!”

“Like what?” Blue snarled.

“Like… like – what if I forgot you?” he asked desperately. “Blue, I can’t… I can’t forget you.”

Blue softened in spite of herself. She couldn’t imagine forgetting Gansey, or any of her raven boys. To have Gansey forget _her,_ though – she flashed back to her mother listing out fates worse than death, and thought that that would be worse than all of them. Every moment of their lives together – from Gansey’s disastrous first conversation with her to the stolen moments of muted affection – she wouldn’t trade a second of it for all the magic in the world.

Her tone was a reflection of heartbreak as she reminded him, “That could happen anyways, if we don’t find out what’s going on.”

“The way to do that is not to give Adam and Ronan a comprehensive summary of their relationship. There are some things we need to leave out,” Gansey persisted.

“But why?” Blue pressed.

“Well…” Gansey rubbed his lip so hard that it moved with his thumb. “Well, how would _you_ feel if someone introduced you to someone you didn’t know and told you that you were dating?”

Blue scowled; he had a point. For so long, she had resisted falling for him simply because she had been told that she would. If Ronan and Adam had the same kind of reaction – it could be worse than not telling them at all. “Fine,” she snapped. She jabbed a finger at him. “But we’d better figure this out soon.”

Satisfied with her last word on the subject, Blue stomped back into Monmouth and grabbed Adam by the arm, pulling him towards the couch. “Hey – what?” he protested. “Blue!”

“We’re having a discussion,” Blue informed him, shoving him into a seat. She turned to look at Ronan, crossing her arms so that he would know she was serious. “Take a seat. Or do I have to drag you, too?”

“Why does he get a choice?” Adam muttered under his breath.

Ronan’s mouth twisted into a smirk. “I’d like to see you try, Sargent.” Blue almost missed the way his eyes flicked past her to Adam. Almost.

Setting her expression to a dark glare, Blue stomped over to Ronan. Never mind that she wasn’t entirely certain that she _could_ move him – she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of admitting it. Ronan, apparently smarter than she gave him credit for, ducked around her and sunk into the couch of his own volition. It did not escape her that he shifted to angle himself towards Adam from the other side of the couch.

“Maggot,” Ronan snapped, eyes on her now. “What the fuck is going on?”

The corner of Adam’s lip twitched in amusement at Ronan’s bluntness, almost as if he was used to it already. Blue suddenly found herself wondering what they’d talked about while she had been outside with Gansey.

Choosing not to ponder it further, Blue crossed her arms and shot Ronan a look. “Once upon a time,” she began, taking excessive pleasure in Ronan’s eye roll. Gesturing dramatically at Ronan, she continued, “Ronan Lynch became friends with Gansey, who looked past his personality for some unknown reason.” Adam snorted, and Blue turned to him with a grin. “Then, one day, Adam Parrish started going to Aglionby Academy for some stupid reason, and then Gansey’s ridiculous car broke down, and Adam fixed it. And then Ronan was an antisocial jerk, but somehow you two also became friends. And then you guys met me, and we all lived somewhat-happily ever after.”

“Of course you would end it with you,” Ronan scoffed. Adam laughed, and Ronan’s eyes snapped to him. There was something in his face – Blue couldn’t quite name it, but she could see it. Just a hint that something was wrong.

“So,” Adam started, breaking a silence that Blue hadn’t realized had descended. “We’re… friends?”

“Friends?” Ronan echoed. The hint got a little more pronounced.

“Um…” Blue hesitated.

“Yes,” Gansey inserted, shooting Blue a meaningful look. “Just friends.”

“Great friends. _Best_ friends,” Blue added, glaring at Gansey. “No matter Gansey would like to think.”

“Jane –”

“Don’t push me, Gansey,” she threatened. “I’m working with you for now. Don’t make me change my mind. Where are you going?” This last part was directed at Ronan, who was suddenly halfway to the door. He didn’t stop. All at once, Blue recognized the look he had had buried beneath his face just moments before. It was an image given to the emotions she’d had outside; it was a reflection of heartbreak.

“Ronan,” Gansey said sternly. Ronan just shook his head and walked past him.


	4. The Adrenaline of Maybe-Crashing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ronan leaves Monmouth and basically drives himself crazy with overthinking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm pretty sure these chapter titles are far more impressive as chapter titles than they are in the text. Amazingly, this one only shows up once, even though I could have made all sorts of metaphors. Really, there's enough suffering in this chapter. There is also so much italicizing.
> 
> No, but seriously, this felt so emotionally intense when I was writing it, but as usual, it seemed less so when I was reading it over. But it's still slightly heart-wrenching. Basically, this is the end of last chapter times at least five. This is your warning.

_Adam. Adam Parrish._

Ronan was wracking his brain, trying to find some sort of hint or sign – anything – that he knew who that was. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Gansey and Blue – of course he did – but he couldn’t seem to wrap his mind around the idea that he had forgotten an entire person. He couldn’t believe that he had forgotten this _particular_ person.

Not that there was anything special about Adam.

Not that Ronan would know if there was.

_Friends. Friends. Friends._

It seemed like a cruel joke of the universe. Ronan had so few friends, so few people he was willing to trust. It didn’t seem right that this one should be taken from him. Or, not really taken – he was still there, but it was as if he hadn’t been before. Ronan didn’t know what to think: had he lost something, or gained it?

It was so simple, too, to think that he would want to be friends with Adam. Adam, who seemed to be from a world opposite of his. Everything Ronan remembered without Adam, Adam remembered without Ronan. Months or years of his life, altered. Both of their lives, really. Their memories not gone, but changed.

The long sound of a car horn sounded behind him, and Ronan lifted his head from the steering wheel. The stoplight was green above him. It had been green when he'd stopped the car, too. He stuck his middle finger out the window, letting this traveler know exactly how he felt about the interruption. Then he shot off the line, switching through gears until the other car and all of Henrietta was out of sight.

_Great friends. Best friends._

You don’t just forget about your best friends. God, it would be like forgetting about Gansey, or Noah, or even Blue. _Was_ that what it was like? Ronan didn’t know. It was impossible to compare, because he just didn’t _know._ Who had Adam been to him? Who was he to him now?

That was the worst of it, really. These feelings that Ronan was trying to pretend he wasn’t having – you aren’t supposed to have those sorts of feelings about your friends. Especially not your best friends.

 _Wrong, wrong, wrong._ It was just so wrong. Ronan could _feel_ how wrong it was, deep in his chest. Adam _couldn’t_ just be his friend, but that was what Blue and Gansey had said, so it must be Ronan that was wrong. _This is all so wrong._

 _Adam Parrish._ Why couldn’t things just be simple? Ronan didn’t understand why this would be happening to him. He didn’t want to be having feelings for one of his friends, and he didn’t want to be having feelings for someone he didn’t know. Somehow, impossibly, he had to deal with both. Adam Parrish: a friend; a stranger.

This wasn’t _right!_ Ronan slammed his hand against the steering wheel, and then wrapped his stinging palm around the wheel so tightly that his fingers ached in a whole other way. This physical expression – rebellion – seemed to be the only way he could forget for just a second about the pain in his heart. He just felt so powerless.

In the armrest of the passenger side door, his phone began vibrating. Ronan couldn’t remember how it had gotten there, but that wasn’t so odd; he never paid much attention to his phone. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder: _Did Adam put it there? How many times has Adam been in my car?_

Ronan pulled around a sharp corner without braking and reveled in the moment of uncontrollable momentum, the adrenaline of maybe-crashing. It felt so good to be _choosing_ to be out of control. He needed that today.

The phone kept vibrating. Ronan could just imagine Gansey back at Monmouth – the fight he must have had with Blue over calling right away or leaving him some time to himself. She had already been trying to call him back in as Ronan sped out of the parking lot.

Ronan found himself wondering if Adam had contributed anything to their discussion, and immediately hated himself for it. He slammed on the brakes and ripped through several feet of dirt and grass on the side of the road as he came to an uncoordinated stop. He turned off the engine and grabbed his phone as he burst from the car. Then he threw the phone as far as he could into the field beside the road.

Feeling entirely unsatisfied, Ronan got back into the car and rested his head on the wheel, breathing heavily. He closed his eyes and let himself think it for just a second. _Adam Parrish. I have a crush on Adam Parrish._

It wasn’t fair, he knew. He didn’t even _know_ Adam, not really. Adam was someone he had known, or would know, or still knew somewhere inside of himself, but Ronan didn’t know anything about him at all. He knew so far that Adam went to Aglionby, that he knew about cars, that he knew about Glendower. He knew his name.

_Adam. Adam Parrish._

It was worse than if he’d truly never met him before, Ronan thought. It was like seeing someone you’d been friends with back in elementary school. There was this feeling that they should be friends, that it should be easy, but not knowing how to do it anymore. His best friend was someone he didn’t even know.

Ronan squeezed the steering wheel once, trying to anchor himself to this reality he’d found himself in. Then he lifted his head and opened the car door once again. He got out more calmly this time, although he still felt off-center. Chaos reigned beneath his skin.

Sighing heavily, Ronan began tramping through the field in search of his phone. It wasn’t the first time he’d hurled his phone far away from himself, but it was the first time he’d gone after it himself. He frowned, thinking of the last time he’d thrown his phone into a field. He couldn’t remember retrieving it; only sitting at the side of the road for half an hour before leaving, phone safely back in the car. His head hurt trying to remember how it had gotten there.

_Adam._

Ronan sent a rock skidding across the field and wondered if he had had a crush on Adam when he had known him the first time. Maybe he had. If these feelings had arisen so quickly upon meeting Adam _this_ time, it would make sense if it had been the same the first time around. He didn’t know how to feel about that.

The phone was still vibrating in the dirt, which may have been the only way Ronan was able to find it. He lifted it just as it stopped ringing. The damn thing was sturdy; the screen, cheerfully informing him that he had missed 11 calls from Gansey, wasn’t even cracked. Declan had threatened to force an even more technologically-advanced phone on him if he broke this one, but that didn’t stop Ronan from wishing he could take it out of its case and smash it with a rock. It started ringing again.

Impatiently, Ronan answered the call and told Gansey, “I’ll come back when I goddamn fucking want to!” Then he hung up. He’d sounded angrier than he’d actually felt, answering the phone. He resisted the urge to throw the phone again as he headed back to the car. Gansey didn’t call again.

He wondered if Gansey knew about his crush on Adam, if he’d had a crush on him before. That seemed like something he should have mentioned. Though, Ronan hadn’t really given him a chance, not without Adam being present, too.

Gansey wouldn’t have noticed, Ronan decided, unless he’d been told. Ronan didn’t think he would have told him. Blue, though – Blue might have figured it out. And Noah knew everything. It suddenly seemed entirely possible that his friends knew his feelings better than he did.

Maybe it had gone away, Ronan thought desperately. Maybe he’d stopped liking Adam that way once he got to know him. Maybe it had faded away. He wondered how long that would take. He wished he knew how to survive it.

Ronan reached the car and dropped the phone into the back seat, hoping against hope that he would never find it again. Then he drove the rest of the way to the Barns, trying to shut out his thoughts.

The moment Ronan entered the house, a little piece of his troubles seemed to be washed out of his soul. The Barns were a feeling of safety shaped into reality with wood and brick and magic. It looked so lived-in. _I did this,_ he thought. _I made this possible._ A tiny thrill at the reality of it went through him once more, but it only seemed to remind him that there was a piece of himself that was still missing. _Has Adam ever been here?_

It hurt to be so melancholy in this place, so Ronan tried not to be. He tried not to think about all the memories he no longer had, all the questions he could no longer answer. It was everywhere inside him, though, and it was everywhere outside him, too. Someone else’s homework was on the kitchen table. The fridge held food that he hadn’t bought. There were two unfamiliar shirts in the laundry. Ronan wouldn't let himself read too much into it.

_Why can’t I remember?_


	5. Just One of A Thousand Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam sits on his steps and thinks about things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops, this is kind of late. Also, there was nothing to give me a really good title, so...

After Ronan had left Monmouth, Adam had tried to press Blue and Gansey for more information about him: how well did they know each other? Was he always like this? What else did Adam need to know about him – what else had he known about him before?

Mostly, though, Adam had wanted to know what they were hiding, because it was obvious that they were hiding _something._ Adam had spent too much time hiding the details of his life not to recognize it when someone else was doing it to him.

The irony was that it seemed to be exactly the details of his own life that were being hidden from him now. _Unknowable_ hissed through his thoughts. It felt like a while since he’d thought that of himself, but he couldn’t explain why. Now, Adam felt less like he understood himself than he ever had.

It hadn’t been long before Adam had grown tired of half-answers and careful misdirects, and so he’d excused himself with the excuse of homework. Blue had seemed hesitant to let him go, as if by having both him and Ronan out of Monmouth, they were in greater danger of forgetting even more. Maybe of forgetting again. _Could I come back here again tomorrow with no memory of any of this?_ It was a strangely unsettling thought.

“Maybe you should talk to my mom?” Blue had suggested.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Gansey had replied, shooting Blue a cryptic look. “You’d have to _prepare_ her for the situation.”

“She’s a psychic,” Adam had reminded them. “Can you really surprise her?”

Gansey and Blue had exchanged another look. “I think it might be best to have her come over here,” Blue had concluded, though Adam couldn’t remember Maura Sargent ever stepping foot in Monmouth, and he wasn’t sure it was necessary to change that.

Still, Blue had pushed past Gansey’s look of polite hesitation and told Adam, “Besides, I think it would be better with the both of you, don’t you?” _The both of you,_ Adam had thought. _Adam and Ronan. Ronan and Adam._ It had given Adam a strange feeling to think of it that way, but he hadn’t let it show. Somehow managing to agree with her, he’d realized that, until that moment, he hadn’t truly been certain that he _would_ see Ronan again. This, too, had been a little unsettling. Adam didn’t want to think about it, but he did kind of want to see Ronan again.

They had decided, in the end, that Adam would come over around noon the next day. Without sarcasm or ceremony, Gansey had said that Ronan would probably be back at Monmouth after church. If he wasn’t, Blue had continued, they would simply proceed without him; he didn’t like psychics anyways.

This, of course, had been an awful lot of information for Adam to take in. Ronan, as far as he could tell, didn’t seem like the type to enter a church unless he was vandalizing it. Though, if he was religious, maybe it made sense that he didn’t like psychics. _Do I count as a psychic?_

Adam continued pondering this as he sat at the top of the steps outside his apartment. He’d been doing this every Sunday for the past few months, just watching the church-goers go back to their lives outside of this obedient Sunday morning ritual.

 _Do all of them hate psychics?_ Adam wondered. Some of them must have visited 300 Fox Way before, though. Maybe they were all hypocrites, Adam mused. Maybe they each hoped to die inside that church, where they were faithful, rather than in the outside world where they were imperfect and immoral. Outside of those doors, they were no better than him.

Adam felt eyes on him, and shifted his gaze towards one of the shinier cars in the lot. Declan Lynch stood beside it, hand on the car door, studying him with distrust. Matthew had already gotten into the car, and – _him._ Ronan. Ronan _Lynch,_ Adam realized. How was it possible that he could have forgotten Ronan but remembered his brothers? Adam thought that he wouldn’t have minded forgetting Declan, and then immediately changed his mind; he preferred to be aware of his adversaries.

The look on Declan’s face continued to be displeased as Ronan spoke to Matthew. Adam felt unfairly persecuted, as though Declan disapproved of something Adam didn’t remember doing. He probably did; if Adam had been friends with Ronan – well, it made sense that they had done some things together that Declan didn’t like. Declan didn’t like a lot of things.

Ronan straightened slowly, and Adam realized that Chainsaw was perched on his shoulder. He suddenly wondered whether Chainsaw was Ronan’s bird – he couldn’t remember ever questioning it before, though he never remembered her having an owner. He hadn’t had the time to question her familiarity with him yesterday, but –

 _Shit._ Ronan had followed Declan’s gaze and caught him looking. The brief second of eye contact sent a jolt through Adam’s spine. He averted his eyes quickly and tried to calm his racing heart.

A car door slammed a little too loudly, and Declan’s voice, sharp as a dagger, said, “Ronan –”

“See you next week, Matthew,” Ronan interrupted. There was a long pause before he added, “Declan.” Clearly, annoying Declan was a favorite pastime of Ronan’s.

Daring to break his staring contest with the floor, Adam glanced into the parking lot to see Ronan jogging towards the steps. He looked away quickly. _He’s just doing it to piss off Declan,_ Adam told himself determinedly. _He has no other reason to come up here._

The steps creaked beneath Ronan’s feet, and Adam looked up when Ronan stopped two steps below where he sat. He held out a text book. “Parrish,” he greeted. There was a long silence as Adam tried to decide whether to look at the book or Ronan. He settled for the book, and Ronan added, “I think this might be yours.”

Wordlessly, Adam took the book from him and flipped it open to examine the inside cover, as if it could have been anyone else’s textbook in the condition it was in. As expected, on the top of the scratched and torn cover, a desperate pen had declared “Property of Adam Parrish.” There was something unexpected, though: his name was underlined, and an arrow directed him from it to another declaration, this one in a much more insistent pen: “Property of Ronan Lynch.”

Adam slammed the book shut and tried not to blush or think about it. It had clearly been a joke – Adam so hated to think that anyone else owned him – but he couldn’t help but wonder how he’d felt about it at the time: had he been angry? All he felt right now was embarrassment, like he had overheard something he shouldn’t have, something he hadn’t wanted to hear. “Thank you,” he said, not quite meeting Ronan’s eyes.

Ronan nodded slowly. “Right. Sure,” he said. There was an awkward silence, where it seemed as if Ronan couldn’t decide if he should just leave or not. Eventually, he said, “I didn’t know you lived here.”

Startled, Adam laughed. This was just one of thousand things Ronan didn’t know about him; it was just one of a thousand things he must have known before. _How do you relearn an entire person?_

Ronan narrowed his eyes; he looked guarded, tense. He opened his mouth, but then he closed it and backed down a step. Suddenly desperate for him to stay, Adam said the first thing that came to his mind: “Did you bring that bird into church with you?”

Ronan looked between him and Chainsaw on his shoulder. Very serious, he informed Adam: “Chainsaw is very pious.”

Adam rolled his eyes. “Can birds even pray?”

“Of course they can,” Ronan informed him matter-of-factly. “Haven’t you ever heard of birds of prey?”

Slightly surprised at the joke, Adam laughed. He still wasn’t sure whether or not he was supposed to believe that Ronan had actually taken his pet raven to Mass. Maybe he would have been able to tell before, when he’d known Ronan. All the little things, and all the big things – just gone. Ronan was a chalkboard in Adam’s mind; he had had so much information before, but it had all been erased. Trying not to dwell on it, he said, “What could she possibly want? What does she have to pray for?”

Ronan frowned at him. “You’re missing the point of prayer, Parrish. It’s not just about what you want.” Adam considered this. He thought that he wouldn’t be very good at prayer, then, since he found it so difficult to get beyond himself and what he lacked. He suddenly wondered if Ronan had prayed to remember, if he had said Adam’s name in the house of God. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to know badly enough to ask. The thought felt like a spell that replaced Adam’s heart with a rock.

Adam swallowed and glanced at his grubby watch. Closing his eyes, he allowed himself a mental swear-word; he had meant to leave for Monmouth five minutes ago. Ronan seemed startled when he stood up, as if Adam was a statue who had suddenly come to life. “I have to meet Gansey and Blue,” he explained, not meeting Ronan’s eyes. He felt like an usurper; from Ronan’s eyes, Adam was intruding on his home, his friends, his life. It couldn’t possibly feel fair to Ronan.

Ronan nodded slowly, stepping to the side so that Adam could descend the stairs. Frowning at the book in his hands, Adam moved to put it back in his apartment first. When he came back out, Ronan was still standing in the same place, as if he was the statue now. Too nervous to look at him, Adam studied the floor as he walked past.

“Hey, Parrish,” Ronan called after him once he’d reached the bottom of the stairs. Adam looked back and was surprised to find Ronan looking strangely determined, though his voice had sounded uncertain. “Do you want a ride?”


	6. Hope Was an Irrepressible Creature

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Psychic things and Maura being eccentric and Adam and Ronan being friends or something, not necessarily in that order.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's Sunday again... oops. This may also be the strangest chapter, which I can partially blame on writing much of it late at night, though I can't excuse not changing it now.
> 
> Also, I may not be able to post next weekend, as much of my time has already been sequestered.

The first indication that Ronan had arrived was the sound of the BMW ripping over the loose asphalt in Monmouth’s parking lot. The first indication that Adam was with him was the sound of his laughter in the stairway.

Blue’s eyes widened, and she looked to Gansey. He looked alert, too: they both knew that Adam wouldn’t have driven so recklessly in the parking lot – he probably wouldn’t have driven at all. And Ronan didn’t laugh like that – actually, Adam didn’t laugh like that either, if he wasn’t with Ronan. Hope was an irrepressible creature bursting inside of her.

Blue rushed to the door and flung it open. She caught just a glimpse of Ronan’s surprised smile before he hid it. “Hey, Blue,” Adam said. “We were just… Well, Ronan was at the church, and he offered me a ride.”

Blue narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “You were laughing.”

“It’s called a joke. Maybe you’d understand if you had a sense of humor,” Ronan put in. Adam snorted, though he tried to suppress it.

Blue’s eyes narrowed further. “What kind of joke?”

“You wouldn’t find it funny,” Ronan replied.

“I wouldn’t find it funny?” she demanded. “And why wouldn’t I find it funny? Because I’m a girl? Because I’m not an idiot? Because it’s _not funny_?”

“It was in Latin,” Adam snickered.

“Oh,” Blue said, drawing back. “Like, Caesar Latin, or the kind of Latin Ronan writes on the board before class?”

Adam frowned in confusion – of course he wouldn’t know what Ronan wrote on the board. It was so strange to think about, since he had been the one to mention it to her in the first place. Ronan smirked and muttered, “Oh, like those are so different.”

Blue sighed. “And to think that some people actually think that knowing Latin makes you more cultured,” she grumbled, wrinkling her nose at them.

“I normally don’t laugh at those sorts of things,” Adam defended. “It was… just so unexpected.”

“Well, I didn’t expect you to understand it,” Ronan told him, that delighted smile fighting its way back onto his face for a brief second.

“Whatever,” Blue decided. “You may as well have a seat on the couch. My mom will be back soon with some supplies she said she needed.” These supplies mainly consisted of buttery foods, and Blue suspected that her mother’s excuse of her psychic gifts being impaired by the utter lack of unhealthy, store-brand food items in Gansey’s refrigerator was utter nonsense. However, she wasn’t going to tell this to the boys as long as her mother brought back some yogurt as well.

“Your mom?” Ronan asked, looking like he wanted to leave already. He sat on the couch anyways, notably closer to Adam than yesterday.

Blue shot a look at Gansey. “You didn’t tell him?”

Gansey splayed his arms helplessly. “I haven’t exactly gotten a chance to speak to him,” he defended.

Blue rolled her eyes. “She’s going to do a reading,” she explained. “To figure out what’s going on –” She gestured vaguely between them.

Ronan made a face, but he remained seated. Blue thought this had something to do with the fact that the toe of Adam’s torn-up sneaker was pressing into the side of Ronan’s mud-stained-but-otherwise-intact shoe. Blue pursed her lips as she studied the point of contact.

The door to Monmouth slammed open. “Sorry that took so long!” Maura announced, breathing labored as she struggled her way into the apartment beneath her pile of reusable grocery bags. Gansey looked distressed, either at the knowledge that Maura wouldn’t allow him to help her, or possibly just in reaction to the sheer amount of food Maura had procured for this reading. She dumped the bags on the floor, and took out a yogurt cup, which she tossed to Blue. She tossed Gansey a pez dispenser, which he examined as if it were a particularly perplexing puzzle.

Blue frowned at her yogurt. “Do you have spoons somewhere in this disaster land?”

Though she hadn’t directed the question at anyone in particular, Gansey immediately headed into the kitchen/laundry/bathroom to procure a spoon for her. As he made an unnecessary amount of noise rummaging through the drawers, Maura dug around in one of the shopping bags and came up with a bag of pre-popped, buttered popcorn. She opened it immediately and shoved a handful into her mouth. Potentially, Blue thought, this was a protest over Blue turning her into a “house-call psychic.”

Gansey returned with a spoon, which he handed wordlessly to Blue, and the four of them all watched as Maura extracted two additional items from her bags: a lollipop, and a bottle of beer.

“Mom!” Blue exclaimed as Gansey sputtered and Ronan smirked. “Please tell me you didn’t buy Ronan beer!”

Maura just smiled at her. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “The beer’s for Adam.”

Now Ronan appeared blindsided as well. Adam said, “Me? Ma’am, no offense, but I’d rather not.”

“No?” She shrugged and put the beer back in the bag, taking out a box of animal crackers instead. Blue was almost entirely certain that there was no store in Henrietta that sold all of these items. Nevertheless, Maura had procured them, and she now tossed the animal crackers to Adam, and the lollipop to Ronan without looking. The two of them exchanged glances, and immediately traded.

“I’d rather have the beer,” Ronan muttered, even as he tore open the box and began sharing the crackers with Chainsaw.

Maura rolled up her bag of popcorn and finally turned her full attention to the two boys on the couch. Blue watched her expression slowly dissolve from ready to confused. She said, “I don’t understand what you need me for.”

“Mom?” Blue prompted. “What do you mean?”

Maura pointed a decisive finger at Ronan and Adam. “They haven’t forgotten anything.”

“Ma’am?” Adam said at the same time Gansey said, “What?”

Ronan and Adam exchanged another look, seeming utterly confused. “What do you mean we haven’t forgotten?” Ronan asked, sounding frustrated. “Then why don’t I remember ever meeting him before yesterday?”

Maura frowned and stalked across the room to Ronan and placed a hand on his head, closing her eyes. Ronan looked like he wanted to shove her off, but Adam’s hand had slid down onto his, and it seemed as if Ronan was afraid to move at all. Blue wondered suddenly if Adam knew what he was doing.

Maura held out her free hand, and Blue hurried to take ahold of it. Moments later, Maura let out a small breath and backed away from Ronan. She stared at the two of them on the couch as if they were some new species of creature that she unexpectedly uncovered. “Mom?” Blue whispered, a little afraid to hear what she would have to say.

Maura let out a slow breath and tore her gaze away from the boys. “Psychometry is really Calla’s thing,” Maura qualified, and Blue nodded. “But… something strange is happening here.”

“Understatement of the century,” Ronan muttered.

“The thing is,” Maura continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “their memories aren’t gone. They’re still there, somewhere. There’s just… _something_ diverting them. Changing them even as they access the original memory.”

“So… their memories are actually changing?” Gansey asked, sounding horrified.

“No,” Maura said. “No. It’s not like that. The original memories are intact, but when they go to think of them… something strange happens.”

“Strange like erasing an entire person?” Blue said.

“But we can remember yesterday,” Adam said, looking to Ronan for confirmation. “And we can remember everyone else. Why is it just –?” He broke off, though, apparently unsure what to say there.

“Are we going to forget – or change, whatever – anything else?” Ronan asked. He looked pained at even having to ask the question, though that might have simply been that he had to ask Maura.

Maura frowned. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “It seems fairly stable at the moment. You’re only forgetting up to a certain point. Time is a circle, but this… _thing_ seems to know exactly what part of the circle it’s working with.”

“What can we do to fix it?” Gansey asked immediately.

“Should we be giving them comprehensive summaries of their lives?” Blue added, ignoring the look Gansey shot her.

Maura shook her head. “I really don’t know. I’m not sure what will help or hurt here. As long as it isn’t getting any worse, it might be better to just go along with it. I’ll have to consult with Calla and –” She broke off, frowning. Blue felt the absence of Persephone’s name like a slap or a weight. Adam hung his head, closing his eyes. Ronan took the lollipop from his lap and tucked it behind Adam’s ear, making him smile instead.

Blue sighed. “All right,” she said. It would have to do. As long there was at least something there to recover, Gansey would recover it. She had to believe that.


	7. A Puzzle Without All the Pieces Present

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The beginning of Ronan and Adam's first day back at school since the memory-thingy happened, with so much introspection.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so... it's been way longer between updates than I meant for it to be. I'm really, really sorry; I'm going to really try not to let it happen again. So, yeah, fingers crossed, I'll see you here next weekend.
> 
> In other news, this may end up being one of the longest chapters of this story, for no reason whatsoever. I could tell that it was getting too long for me when it started being insufferable to deal with towards the end. Also, I meant for it to take us through the school day to at least lunch; it only gets through first period...

Ronan sat next to Adam in Latin class.

If Adam had needed any more proof that he knew Ronan, this was it. He could see it in the way that Ronan dropped his bag to the floor between their desks without a second thought: the routine of it. Adam tried to remember seeing Ronan sitting beside him before, but he couldn’t seem to conjure up any memory of it. It wasn’t that he had thought the desk beside him had been empty before – he couldn’t remember ever even thinking about it.

The classroom was still empty aside from them, and Ronan cast him a quick glance before he headed up to the board. He began tracing Latin words on the board in cruel, mocking letters. So this was what Blue had been talking about. It was strange to realize that she knew about something that went on in Adam’s class that he didn’t; it was another screaming reminder: _wrong, wrong, wrong._

Adam only recognized a little more than half of the words, and those he did recognize did not seem to belong on a high school whiteboard. Ronan glanced back at him, once, twice, and Adam realized that he was showing off. He didn’t know why Ronan Lynch would feel the need to show off to Adam, of all people. If he really thought about it, he’d already known that Ronan was better than him at Latin – Adam knew that he wasn’t at the top of the class in Latin, but he knew he was better than all of his classmates. All of the classmates he remembered, at least.

But _Ronan_ didn’t know that, he realized. Ronan had no idea where Adam fell on the spectrum of Latin ability, if he was worse than Gansey or if he was just below Ronan. ( _Was_ he just below Ronan? Ronan was the king of this classroom; was Adam a noble in his own right, or was he just the court jester?) For all Ronan knew, even, Adam could be better than him, and his memories had just rearranged themselves. No wonder Ronan wanted to prove himself; to prove _to_ himself that he was in control of his memories, just a little bit.

Ronan, with a final flourish of the marker across the board, turned back to face the empty room with a grin. Adam shook his head at him. “Is that even a real sentence?”

“You think I would lie, Parrish?” Ronan asked, snapping the cap onto the marker. “It says –”

Adam held up a hand. “I get the gist,” he said, though he didn’t. He understood enough to see that he really didn’t want to know exactly what it said, though.

Ronan smirked and headed back to his seat. He still had the marker, and he handed it to Adam. Adam frowned at it. “What exactly do you expect me to do with this?”

Ronan shrugged and launched himself into his seat. “Contribute. Hide it. Any sort of shit you want. Anything to fuck with the sub.”

 _The sub._ Adam felt a jolt as a circuit connected inside of his head, illuminating several bits of information in sequence: their Latin teacher at the beginning of the year was Colin Greenmantle; the Gray Man told them that Greenmantle had been his employer; Adam stood outside of Greenmantle’s house with an envelope of fabricated evidence; the Gray Man killed Niall Lynch; Ronan. Ronan _Lynch._

Adam let out a breath, stunned. It was almost like remembering, he thought, but – no. That was wrong. It wasn’t like remembering at all. It was putting together the shards of his mind to figure out something he should have already known. It wasn’t the certainty of a picture, but it was an estimation: a puzzle without all the pieces present.

“We did that,” he whispered. “Didn’t we?”

Ronan tilted his head. “What?”

 _Chased away Greenmantle,_ Adam wanted to say. _Got your revenge._ But it was too much. Of course Ronan wouldn’t have put it together. This was impossible to understand. Adam felt like his head was going to explode. He couldn’t explain any of this. He shook his head; what did you say to the boy you didn’t remember being friends with when you suddenly realized that his father was dead? What did you say when you realized you’d helped him enact a revenge scheme on the person responsible? What did you say when you realized just how much you’d lost?

Adam said, “Nothing.” Ronan looked at him. But he couldn’t make himself say anything. It was too close; it was too much. He didn’t want to get into this discussion, all the things they’d forgotten about each other. There was a lot about Adam’s life that he didn’t want Ronan to know, in spite of the fact that he must have known before – everyone else did – and had been friends with him anyways. He didn’t want to head down that road. _Let’s get to know each other all over again. Tell me something about you, and I’ll tell you something about me._

Adam shook his head again. What was wrong with him that he wanted that so badly? He was Adam Parrish, Army of One. Adam Parrish, Unknowable. And yet some part of him wanted to think that Ronan had known him before, that Ronan could know him again. He shouldn’t want anyone to know him – Adam Parrish was such a damaged thing – but some part of him hoped or wished or knew that Ronan would look past that.

Eyes closed, Adam took a breath. He really needed to get a handle on himself here. He was Adam Parrish – he didn’t have these problems. He always knew how to sort his thoughts into things he could and couldn’t think about – things he needed to think about, and things that would just get in his way. So why was he having so much trouble now?

Adam opened his eyes. The marker was still in his hand. He dug his teeth briefly into his lower lip and reached over to give the marker back to Ronan. His hand brushed against Ronan’s arm, and he let it pause there for a moment. Touching Ronan was so automatic – he’d seen as much yesterday; it had felt like even his hair moved of its own accord, closer to Ronan. His hands moved without him telling them to. It was like muscle memory, except –

Ronan was giving him a questioning look. There was maybe a little bit of hurt in his expression, like he was disappointed that Adam didn’t want to play his games. Adam shrugged and headed to the board. “It would annoy him more if we hid the eraser,” he said, waving the thing in the air.

Ronan looked at the board, bearing his vulgar lesson, and grinned. “Parrish,” he said appraisingly. “Good thinking.” He got up as well, heading directly to the trash can where he unceremoniously dropped the marker. Adam gave him a look. “What?” Ronan defended. “So he doesn’t suspect anything.”

Adam rolled his eyes and scanned the room for a good place to put the eraser. He couldn’t even explain why he was doing this, just that he didn’t want to say no to Ronan. He glanced at Ronan for just a second, and then he headed to the bookshelf at the back of the classroom. Adam slid all of the books out just enough to slide the eraser in behind them, and then he lined them all up perfectly, as if they were still resting against the wall. Then he turned back to Ronan, seeking approval or something equally unnecessary – _what’s wrong with me?_

“Nice, Parrish,” Ronan said, nodding appreciatively. “He’ll never find it there.” Ronan sounded almost gleeful, and Adam felt himself smile back reflexively. He headed back to his desk, and Ronan started back to his seat as well. Coming from opposite sides of the empty room – it was almost as if they were going towards each other. _I need to get out of my own head._

They sat down facing each other. Eye contact was a challenge, a dare, a war, and Adam wasn’t going to surrender. It felt like hours – like school had been cancelled, and neither of them had gotten the call; like they’d spent the entire day sitting in this classroom, refusing to blink.

Then the floor creaked as students began entering the building. For a brief, fleeting second, Adam felt certain that school _had_ been cancelled, that they’d been here for a whole day already. He looked away, getting his bearings. He let himself close his eyes for just a second, preparing himself for another week of work, of studying, of _Aglionby._ When he turned back, Ronan was still looking at him.

“What?” he said.

Ronan looked away. He might have answered, still, but then the tide of students reached the classroom and came flooding in. Gansey was among them, having an animated discussion with Henry Cheng. He nodded at them and took his seat, allowing Henry to escape the conversation with a murmured, “Talk to you later, Gansey.”

Ronan smirked. “Corrupting the youth, Dick?”

Adam snorted. “Isn’t that your job, Lynch?” he said before he could stop himself.

Gansey shook his head, glancing at the board. “How did I ever think I could leave you two alone in here?” he asked, mostly speaking to himself. He turned to Ronan. “You do realize that absolutely no one knows what that says?”

“That’s part of the fun,” Ronan informed him. Both his tone and his smile were devilish and pleased. Adam almost didn’t stop himself from grinning right along with him.

Gansey pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’ll never understand why the teacher doesn’t just get here earlier,” he said. “It would prevent a lot of frustration.”

Adam shook his head. “He’d just get here earlier, too,” he replied, gesturing to Ronan. Though he wasn’t sure he was in a position to be making judgments on what Ronan would do, he somehow felt as if he could say this. Maybe it was just a joke, but Adam could feel a piece of truth in it. He continued, “Messing with the sub is probably – what? 90% of the reason he actually makes it to school on time?”

Ronan laughed, surprised and delighted. “Am I really that easy to figure out, Parrish?”

“No,” Adam replied. “I just… I don’t know. I just _know,_ you know? I can just tell.”

Ronan rolled his eyes. “What, like how I can tell you’re smart-ass?”

Gansey frowned. “Adam,” he asked curiously, “what else can you tell about Ronan?” It was one of those moments that Gansey really should have been wearing his glasses and taking careful notes in his journal. His attitude could only be described as: _this puzzle is missing half the pieces but I’m going to solve it anyways._

Adam shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “He’s kind of an asshole, but, well, you can figure that out after talking to him for five minutes.” Ronan’s grin was entirely too pleased.

Gansey turned to Ronan, clearly about to ask him the same question. Adam cringed at the thought of the sarcastic remarks Ronan would come up with. Gansey didn’t get the chance, however, because the sub walked in and announced that they all need to quiet down _right now._ Gansey’s look said _We’ll finish this later,_ and he turned to the front of the classroom.

The sub took one look at the board and didn’t even bother attempting to decipher Ronan’s masterpiece. He reached for the eraser, which, of course, wasn’t there. Gansey turned around to shoot the two of them a stern look, and Adam nearly laughed aloud. Ronan shook his head and muttered, “Willpower, Parrish.” Adam bit his lip and tried not to look too entertained.

The sub wiped off Ronan’s writing with his sleeve, and then set about looking for the marker. The class was as far from obedient as they could be without leaving their seats. Eventually, the sub found the marker in the trash, dripping with somebody’s discarded coffee. He dug around for a minute before discovering that the eraser was not, in fact, hiding among the discarded tests and remnants of food the students technically weren’t supposed to have in class.

Exasperated, the sub gave up and began copying the lesson onto the board. Adam and Ronan exchanged conspiratorial grins every time he had to erase something with his arm. _This,_ Adam thought. _This is what I’m missing; how do I get it back?_


	8. Rotting From the Inside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After school, they go back to Monmouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at that: just over one week!
> 
> Also, has anyone else noticed that Noah hasn't been in the last seven chapters? It's felt glaringly obvious to me...
> 
> You may come to a point in this chapter where you wonder what on earth [cryptomnesia](http://www.whatdoesthatmean.com/dictionary/C/cryptomnesia.html) is.

Ronan threw himself into the BMW. He could feel anger creeping through his veins, but he was trying to pretend he couldn’t. Adam was stuffing a broken-looking bicycle into the trunk of the Pig, and Ronan was pretending not to see it. He did, however, allow himself to indulge in inventing a story around this boy, this Adam Parrish. Adam Parrish, in Ronan’s mind, gave his teachers shit. He skipped classes just for the sake of doing nothing. He was stealing that bike he was shoving into Gansey’s trunk.

Ronan sighed and closed his eyes. None of that was accurate, he knew. This invention of Adam Parrish in his head was a lie, and, even worse, Ronan couldn’t quite make himself wish it to be true. It would be so much easier if it was true, if Adam could just be another idiotic Aglionby student, someone Ronan could hate or ignore without having to put too much energy into it.

No, Adam Parrish – and Ronan knew this in some inexplicable, nameless way that he didn’t want to analyze too closely or lose his grip on – was so much more impossible to understand than that. It was as though he was meant for a higher plane of existence, but by some tragic mistake of the universe, he was trapped on this one. Ronan, selfishly, hoped he never found his way to where he belonged.

A tap on his window startled Ronan, and he opened his eyes to glare at – Adam Parrish. He told himself that any abnormalities in his heartbeat were due to the start alone, and added a few extra degrees of irritation to his expression, just in case. Adam looked uncertain, though, and Ronan couldn’t hold the expression for long. His window was rolled down before he could rethink it. “What, Parrish?” he demanded.

“Are you going back to Monmouth?” Adam asked. Ronan just rolled his eyes, which Adam took as a cue to continue. “Could I get a ride? Blue called to have Gansey pick her up.”

Ronan narrowed his eyes; Blue calling Gansey for a ride to Monmouth was not exactly a regular occurrence. Blue typically either showed up on her own, or she and Gansey determined that he would pick her up through some weird, unspoken agreement. He couldn’t remember her ever asking for a ride before.

“I could just tag along to get Blue,” Adam offered.

Ronan cast a glance past him, to where Gansey was watching their interaction with some concern. Ronan’s eyes went back to Adam. “Get in the fucking car, Parrish,” he muttered. “We’re going to the same fucking place.”

Adam’s shoulders relaxed just the smallest bit, and Ronan had to remind himself not to breathe any relief of his own. It didn’t stop him from wondering if Adam ever relaxed completely, and what Ronan could do to ease his burden again.

“So, uh, you’re pretty good at Latin,” Adam said hesitantly.

Ronan was silent, partially because he didn’t know what else he could do that would seem casual enough, and partly because he suddenly wanted to scream. Part of him was basking in this confirmation of Adam’s attention to him – the sub knew better than to cold-call him, and Ronan didn’t care enough to raise his hand, but he’d caught Adam’s eyes flicking to him a couple of times as he muttered the answers under his breath. The much larger part of him, though, was saying: _Wrong. This is wrong. Why is this so hard?_

Adam laughed nervously. “Right,” he said. “So, then… I don’t know. I feel like I don’t know you at all.”

Ronan glanced at him sideways. “You don’t,” he said, because it was true. He felt the strong urge to slam his foot down on the gas pedal, to shove it through the floor. He wanted break something, or drive head-on into a tree, just to see the hood fold in on itself. No, he wanted to _be_ the hood, to be crushed into a shape that couldn’t be undone, just to bring his emotions into the physical world. These were the kind of thoughts he tried not to have – the sort of thing he couldn’t voice, not ever. Ronan felt like his entire body was being turned inside out, and he wasn’t sure if it would be worse if someone noticed, or if no one did.

“I’m supposed to, though,” Adam continued as if Ronan wasn’t imploding. “That’s how this works, isn’t it? Some part of me does know you, but I just _can’t_ access it. Like it’s on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t figure out what it is. It’s so frustrating!”

 _Imagine how I must feel,_ Ronan thought, but he decided to instead say, “You probably don’t want to know me anyways.”

Adam was quiet for a minute, and Ronan almost didn’t hear it when he said, “I do, though.”

It took a herculean amount of willpower for Ronan not to turn and full-on stare at him. It was a weighty half a minute before Ronan was able to reply, just as quietly, “I’d like to know you, too.” He swerved the car into Monmouth’s parking lot.

Adam let out a breath. “There’s so much, isn’t there?” he said. “Two years. I can’t even imagine how we go over two years’ worth of information.”

“I guess we start slow,” Ronan said. He turned off the car, but neither of them moved. Ronan turned to Adam. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Ronan Lynch.”

Adam smiled and held out his hand. “Adam Parrish.”

Ronan eyed the hand distastefully. “God, Parrish, what is this? Congress? Who the fuck shakes hands, anyways?”

Adam laughed. “I mean, it was either shake hands or punch you in the face.” He paused. “You know, for some reason, I still think you would prefer the second.”

“Well, sure,” Ronan replied. “But I’d totally win in a fight. I learned boxing from my dad.”

Adam looked away then, but before Ronan could ask why, he was climbing out of the car. “Come on,” he said, not turning to face Ronan. “If we’re still in the car when Gansey and Blue get here, they’re going to think we’re weird.”

“Please,” Ronan snorted. “They’re probably still sitting in her driveway.” He got out of the car and followed Adam into Monmouth, which was both strange and comfortable.

Adam said, suddenly, “I dated her. For like five seconds, but… I figured I should tell you. To be fair.”

A bullet of jealousy coated in anger and disappointment shot through Ronan’s chest. He wondered if Adam would notice if he took a detour to punch a wall. Deciding against that course of action, he added an extra layer to his walls and said, “Why the fuck would I care if you have a thing for short girls with questionable taste?”

Adam glanced back at him now, and Ronan struggled to keep his expression settled on contempt. Adam looked thoughtful. He said, unoffended, “I think that may be the most offensive thing you’ve said all day.”

Ronan shrugged. “You must not have heard what I said to Gansey earlier, then.”

Adam laughed and turned back to shove the door to Monmouth open. “It’s also pretty inaccurate,” he added. He made his way to the couch and sat down, focusing his eyes on Ronan’s as some sort of a challenge – for which one of them, Ronan wasn’t sure. He eyed the spot beside Adam on the couch warily.

Adam said, “‘Short girl’ might actually be the opposite of what I want.” There was just enough of a pause between _short_ and _girl_ to flood Ronan’s chest with hope, a terrible emotion that he wanted to rip out and throw as far from himself as he could, before it could hurt him. Now he _really_ wanted to punch something.

“Are you going to just stand there?” Adam asked, interrupting Ronan’s emotional turmoil.

Ronan glared at him. He thought about leaving, but then the Pig rumbled into the parking lot. Blue came jogging up the stairs, with Gansey following close behind. The door was shoved open once more, and Ronan tried to incinerate the floor with his eyes.

Blue jostled him. “What are you, a statue? Come on, Gansey wants to consult some boring textbooks. Go sit on the couch.” Ronan offered her a nasty glare as well, but she just bared her teeth at him and shoved him towards Adam, though she couldn’t actually move him.

Ronan stomped to the couch and sat as far from Adam as humanly possible. Adam slid over on the couch so that he was pressed into Ronan’s side. “Jesus, Parrish,” Ronan complained shoving him back against his own wishes. “Leave some room for the holy ghost.” He gestured to a dark corner of the room where he could see Noah lurking.

“Noah!” Blue cried happily. “Where have you been?”

“Entirely unhelpful is what he’s been,” Ronan muttered. Adam’s arm was pressing against his again, and he didn’t have the heart to do anything about it.

Noah stepped into the light and stared at Blue with blank eyes. “Who are you?” he said.

Ronan felt his heart stop. Then Noah grinned. “I really got you there, didn’t I?”

“Noah, you bastard!” Blue exclaimed, flying at him so that she could hit him and hug him at the same time. Gansey looked on with wide eyes. Adam was laughing, slow and quiet.

Ronan scowled at Noah. He refused to admit how concerned he’d been, but relief was pounding in his chest. “It’s not nice to mock people right in front of them, asshole,” he growled.

Noah looked at him over Blue’s shoulder. “Hypocrite,” he accused. Adam’s laughter spiked in volume.

Ronan’s glare deepened. “You’re a fucking menace,” he snarled.

Blue let go of Noah. “Don’t you ever do that again!” she scolded.

Noah smirked. It was so achingly familiar that Ronan kind of wanted to hug him, too. Or maybe he wanted to hug Adam, whose amused expression was some mix of familiar and unfamiliar and _achingly_ perfect. He forced himself to stay still. He was burning down inside.

Noah sat down on the other end of the couch, sinking slightly through the cushion. Ronan could feel the unbalance in his soul – there seemed to be miles of space between Adam and Noah, and no space at all between Adam and Ronan. It felt like too much. Ronan shifted, pressing himself into the arm of the couch in some attempt to retain his sanity. Blue caught his eye, her face softening sympathetically. Ronan hated her for it.

“Gansey,” Blue said slowly, “didn’t you say you wanted to see if the library had any books on crypto-whatever?”

“Cryptomnesia,” Gansey said absently. “Anything memory-related, really.”

“Why don’t you take Adam?” Blue suggested slyly.

Gansey nodded. “Sure.” He was still eying Noah as if he wasn’t entirely convinced that he was really here, that he was really okay. Ronan could relate.

Adam pressed his palm into Ronan’s thigh as he stood, and Ronan felt as if his soul had been infected by it. He was rotting from the inside. Adam glanced back at him before following Gansey out the door, and Ronan could hardly stand to be alive. Everything was terrible.

Blue sighed loudly to get his attention as she landed on the floor in front of him, sitting pretzel-style. “All right, Ronan Lynch,” she said, fixing him with a solemn, scrutinizing gaze. “We need to talk.”


	9. This Unwilling Self-Censorship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blue sits Ronan down for a serious discussion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi... So, it's been forever since I posted a chapter of this, and I am so, so sorry!
> 
> I really have been working on it (off and on) since last time, but it's been difficult (I should have asked for motivation for Christmas). So, yes, sorry it's been so long. I hope this chapter isn't too disappointing, too. The chapter title is a million times more impressive as a title than it is in the text.
> 
> I have no idea when I'll get the next chapter done; it depends on whether it's any easier to write than this one was. In any case, I want to say right now that I definitely will not abandon this story outright - I have too many evil plans. ;)

Ronan was giving Blue his nastiest look. It was a defense mechanism, Blue knew, so she wasn’t fazed by his sneer. “What the fuck do you want to talk about?” Ronan snarled. “Tired of Dick already?” Blue felt her face twitch in annoyance, and Ronan leaned back comfortably on the couch, his face painted with a savage grin. “Yeah, can’t blame you there.”

Blue rolled her eyes and got back to her feet – why not take this opportunity to be above Ronan for once? “Are you finished?” she asked, trying to fill her voice with as much mature disapproval as she’d ever heard from Maura or Calla, which admittedly wasn’t much. Ronan opened his mouth, probably to add another rude comment, but Blue cut him off. “Great,” she said. “I want to talk about Adam.”

Ronan visibly swallowed. “What about Adam?” he asked, his eyes not quite meeting hers.

“More specifically,” Blue informed him, “I want to talk about you and Adam.” Ronan’s eyes flicked to hers, and then far, far away.

“Blue,” Noah warned, hovering anxiously behind her. Blue wasn’t sure when he had moved, and she had to put a lot of effort into not flinching at the sound of his voice so close, quiet as it might be. “You told Gansey –”

Blue flapped an arm at him. “I know what I told Gansey,” she replied irritably. “But there are a few things we need to get out of the way here nonetheless.” She stared Noah down until he nodded and took a step back. She turned her attention back to Ronan.

“What did you tell Gansey?” Ronan asked, picking at his leather bands in an effort to seem uninterested. Blue knew him well enough by now – had seen him without this guard up enough by now – that she could see through it.

Blue shot Noah a quick glare for bringing this up in the first place, but she wasn’t really angry with him. Choosing her words very carefully, she told Ronan, “Gansey doesn’t want to mess around with your memories too much – he wants them to come back on their own. I told him I wouldn’t tell you guys more than you needed to know. But –” she shot a look at Noah, daring him to disagree – “there’s more that you need to know.”

“Like what?” Ronan snarled, irritated either that she and Gansey had come to this agreement without consulting him, or that Blue dared to offer him advice. “Are you going to give me a list of things I’m not allowed to talk about?”

Blue shifted to the side a little so that it would be just a little harder for Ronan to storm past her in anger. “No,” she said slowly. “But I am going to tell you some things about Adam.”

Ronan glared at her; his eyes were like twin volcanoes, with a harsh crust of indifferent stone hiding a flood of red-hot emotion deep within. Blue like to think she’d gotten better at catching the occasional glimpse of true and free feelings from her raven boys, but there were still times when she couldn’t see anything past the walls they’d built inside of themselves. She knew that this was a defense mechanism, that it made them feel safer from the things the world had done to them, but she couldn’t help but wish that there was a more consistent back door for her to get in through. Right now, she couldn’t find a single gap in Ronan’s armor. She knew what emotions he must be feeling, though; she had been through this before.

Very slowly, Ronan dragged his eyes up to meet hers. His voice was cold, quiet, and emotionless as he said, “You can’t have everyone.”

Blue frowned. “What?”

Ronan was now glaring at her left shoulder. “Parrish told me,” he said. “He told me about you two dating before. It’s not – You have to pick one. You can’t tell me what to feel.”

Blue let out a breath; this was far more than she had ever expected Ronan to admit to. She processed his words and felt a wave of anger towards Adam. Trying to calm herself down, she trekked through Ronan’s statement again more slowly, but she found that she was still angry on the other side. “Adam Parrish,” she decided, “is a goddamn idiot.”

“Blue,” Noah pressed in anxiously, but Blue was too irritated to pay him any mind.

“A completely moronic, self-sabotaging, absolutely useless idiot!” she continued. “Doesn’t he realize –”

“Blue,” Noah squeaked more urgently. “You _can’t_.”

Blue opened her mouth to protest, but then she hazarded a glance at Ronan, who happened to look somewhat confused, and terribly, terribly interested. She closed her mouth and turned back to Noah. She closed her eyes for a moment to draw in a deep breath. As she exhaled it hard through her nostrils, she imagined a dragon letting out all the rage in its body in a breath of fire. She opened her eyes. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. But, seriously, I’m going to punch Adam in the face when he gets back.”

Ronan snorted. “Yeah, right.” Blue narrowed her eyes at him, but Ronan just glared right back at her. “Why are you going to punch Adam?” he asked, trying to sound bored. “Jealous?”

Blue scowled at him. “Shut up right now,” she said. “You’re both idiots – it’s oddly perfect. But, in any case, Adam and me – that didn’t mean anything. You can just pretend you know nothing about it, because it literally affects _nothing_.”

Ronan chewed on his leather bands. “Whatever you say, Maggot.”

She could tell he didn’t believe her, that he didn’t quite get what she was saying. It frustrated her beyond measure. Sternly, she said, “Ronan, you and Adam – what you… your…” She scrunched up her face in frustration at the impossibility of this unwilling self-censorship. She thought about nights at Monmouth: Ronan’s arm holding Adam to his chest; the two of them heading for door in a rush, only to spend ten or more minutes inventing increasing ridiculous responses when Gansey asked where they were going; Adam absentmindedly kicking Ronan’s balled up homework back to him; Chainsaw pecking at Adam’s sock as Ronan tried to sneak his textbook away; fights that ended in laughter; fights that ended in kissing. It surprised Blue to realize how fiercely she missed those nights on their behalf. These two boys had been so wrapped up in each other these past few months – Blue had to wonder, now that they had been erased from each other’s memories so completely, how there could be anything left.

Very softly, Blue let out a sigh and tried again. “You and Adam were very important to each other before. Don’t get me wrong – you fought plenty. But no matter what, you were always on the same side when it really mattered. And that’s important, Ronan. That’s – that’s… _real._ That’s something you should be trying to get back. I know that all of this is really hard to understand, but… don’t shut him out just because you’re afraid, okay?”

“I’m not afraid of anything,” Ronan informed her stubbornly.

Blue rolled her eyes, because that was just so far from the truth, but apparently it didn’t count as lying if Ronan was saying it just to be difficult. Rather than calling Ronan out on the lie, though, she chose to use it against him to reinforce her point. Staring at him straight on as a challenge, she reiterated, “Then don’t shut him out.”

Ronan narrowed his eyes, but Blue felt that she’d caught him rather effectively in this exchange, and Ronan couldn’t seem to come up with a good response to that, either. In typical Ronan fashion, he refused to acknowledge her triumph, feigning boredom with the conversation instead. “Are you going to keep lecturing me,” he asked, “or can we actually do something interesting until Gansey and Parrish get back?” Blue thought that his false disinterest would work better if they weren’t currently in the midst of a staring contest.

Hoping that this discussion had been enough to get through to him (but realistically assuming that this wouldn’t be last time she had to sit Ronan down and tell him to stop being an idiot), Blue showcased a devious smile she’d learned from Ronan himself. Affecting a perfectly innocent tone, she asked, “What could you possibly find more interesting than talking about Adam?”

Ronan scowled at her. Rather than dignifying her challenge with a response, he got off the couch and shoved past her; having said all she needed to for now, Blue didn’t stop him. Ronan stomped to his room and slammed the door behind him.


	10. In the Kingdom of Books

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gansey and Adam go to the library.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this chapter was, in fact, easier to write than the last one - so much so, in fact, that it kind of ended up being a bit longer than usual. It's also from Gansey's POV, so... that's fun, right?
> 
> There weren't really any particularly interesting phrases for titles (you would think there would be, with so many Gansey words), so I went with this one because books are cool. :)

Gansey was always surprised by how empty the Henrietta Public Library was on any given weekday afternoon. It was a short, somewhat neglected structure, in the same way that many buildings in Henrietta were short, somewhat neglected structures, but it was endowed with an extra helping of the comfortable charm that was already spread thickly over the town. Gansey couldn’t quite understand how places like Nino’s could garner such attention while this magnificent place only ever seemed to be visited by two or three children more interested in the toys than the books, playing while their mothers socialized with the librarian. He’d mentioned this once to Ronan, who’d quite seriously suggested that he should have Henry Cheng start a campaign for the library to put in a pizza oven. They could burn books to keep it going, he'd said; Gansey had not been amused.

Adam headed past the sizeable collection of videos the library offered, straight to the hardly-touched section of heavy academic books. The first time they’d come here had been when Gansey had found out that the book he’d ordered wouldn’t arrive for two weeks, and Adam had suggested that they check if library somehow stocked a copy. Gansey had been stunned that the idea hadn’t occurred to him before, but then again, he hadn’t really been raised to think about public libraries except in relation to how they could affect a political campaign.

On that visit, Gansey had diverted Adam to the circulation desk to greet the librarian, who had been less than pleased to have her domain invaded by raven boys. Though Adam had since informed Gansey that it would truly make her happier to leave her to her work, he still hesitated for a moment before following Adam back to the books.

Without Monmouth and Cabeswater – without his friends to assign such strong meaning and association to various other places around town – Gansey thought that this secluded corner of the Henrietta Public Library would be his favorite place in town. Sometimes, he thought that he and his friends might be only ones to visit this particular corner in the kingdom of books, and the thought made him simultaneously fiercely affectionate towards the place, and pitying towards the residents of Henrietta who were content to never further their education. Gansey had wisely never voiced this second emotion.

“Do you really expect the library to have anything you’re looking for?” Adam asked, already scanning the titles on one of the shelves. “Your cryptomnesia idea doesn’t seem like something they would stock.”

Truthfully, Gansey did not have high hopes for the library to have any books on cryptomnesia. Really, when he’d begun talking about getting books to research the situation and Blue had aggressively assumed that he planned to check the library first, he’d thought it best not to argue. Still, Gansey replied, “It couldn’t hurt to look.”

Adam nodded and continued skimming the titles. As Gansey moved in beside him, though, Adam abandoned the psychology titles for the far larger supernatural section. If Gansey wasn’t so aware of the existence of magic, he would have found it disappointing that a public library would carry more books on a fake science than a real one. As it was, much of the information on those shelves might very well be false – Gansey had never found the time to sort through all the information offered by people without credentials.

As Gansey began pulling books off the shelf to check indexes, Adam quite easily selected a single book from his section and settled into a chair to read it. Gansey paused in his search to wonder if Adam had chosen his book through some sort of magical interference, or if he simply planned to go through each book for the sake of thoroughness. In either case, Gansey was impressed.

It took a few tries, but Gansey finally found a book referencing cryptomnesia, and brought it to the table Adam was sitting at. As he was about to head back to look for any other books that might be useful, Adam spoke up without lifting his eyes from his page: “What do you think they’re talking about?”

Gansey blinked at him. “Pardon?”

Adam looked up now. “Ronan and Blue,” he clarified. “What do you think they’re talking about?”

Gansey considered this. He loved them both fiercely, but Gansey truly feared what Blue and Ronan could get into if left to their own devices in each other’s company. He _hoped_ all they were doing was talking. “I’m not sure,” Gansey said slowly. “God, I cannot even imagine what they’d talk about.”

Adam nodded, attention returning to his page. “I hope they aren’t doing anything stupid,” he commented idly. 

Gansey scoffed, heading back to his shelf. This was so like the sort of thing that Adam would normally say that Gansey forgot himself long enough to reply, “You’re the only one to ever go along with Ronan’s ill-advised schemes.”

Cautiously, he turned to find Adam looking at him with full attention now. “Yeah?” Adam questioned.

It was a little late to deny it, so Gansey shrugged, hoping for nonchalance. “Noah goes along with them sometimes, too.” Then, completely on reflex, he added, “But I suppose that’s a little different.” He winced at this second slip, but Adam nodded like he knew exactly what Gansey meant, so maybe he assumed that Gansey was referring to Noah’s state of existence.

Gansey went back to his search, which seemed endlessly more tedious when he already had a book he could be investigating. This was not research; this was a necessary evil that was required before research could take place.

Though he didn’t find anything more on cryptomnesia, Gansey did grab a couple of books that seemed promising regarding retrieval of lost memories. He personally wasn’t convinced that books on hypnosis belonged on the same shelf as more proven psychological ideas, but he wouldn’t argue with the shelving scheme if it afforded him results.

Once he was satisfied with his collection of texts, Gansey joined Adam at the table. He took out a piece of paper and began a methodical cataloguing of pages that actually held helpful information. He was halfway through the list of pages he wanted to check in his first book when Adam spoke up again.

“I guess he doesn’t like the library,” Adam said, then immediately clarified, “Ronan,” which Gansey was grateful for, as this book did not discuss the views on libraries held by the gentleman he was currently reading about.

“Is that another thing you just know?” Gansey asked curiously, wondering if it would be possible to get any more information now that Ronan wasn’t around.

Adam shook his head. “You didn’t invite him,” he said simply and went back to his book. Gansey went back to his own investigation, but it was hardly two minutes before Adam looked up again and said, “You left Blue with him, though.”

Gansey frowned. “She didn’t ask to come,” he said uncertainly, but he privately wondered if it was okay that he didn’t offer.

Adam shrugged. “But they get along?” he questioned. “They – they’re friends?”

“We’re all friends, Adam,” Gansey sighed. “Ronan – he’ll fight with anyone, but he cares about us.”

Adam looked down at his book, not quite reading it. “Not me, though,” he said. “He doesn’t care about me – he doesn’t even know me.”

Squeezing his eyes shut for a second, Gansey reached across the table to grip Adam’s arm supportively. “He does know you,” he said fiercely, “and he _does_ care about you. He cares about you so much. He just doesn’t realize it.”

Slowly, Adam lifted his eyes to meet Gansey’s. “And me?” he asked quietly. “Do I care about him?”

Gansey hesitated, unsure whether he should divulge that information. He wasn’t quite sure where the line was on what he could and couldn’t reveal, but this felt uncomfortably close to it. At this point in the conversation, however, it felt as though there was no answer that he could give other than the truth: “Yes.”

“Oh,” Adam said. He looked at the book again, and this time he went back to skimming the page within a minute. Gansey, however, wasn’t quite sure this conversation was over, and surreptitiously watched Adam read with furrowed brows. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before Adam mumbled, almost as if he didn’t want to be heard, “I don’t know, Gansey. I don’t think I understand it.”

Gansey frowned. Not wanting to push Adam into talking about something he didn’t want to talk about, he decided to play dumb and asked, “The book? We can switch if you want.”

“No,” Adam said with surprising conviction. When he looked up, there was a fierce determination burning in his eyes. “I don’t understand –” He grimaced. “Me and Ronan,” he said quietly. “I don’t understand how we could be friends.”

Something inside of Gansey’s chest felt sickeningly large and inconveniently placed, and he wasn’t sure which of his friends to be more concerned for at this statement. He cleared his throat and questioned, “What do you mean? Do you not like him?”

“No, I –” Adam looked away a little, his face starting to turn red. “I like him just fine, I guess. I – I figure that’s just muscle memory, though. Like if someone were to erase all my memories of ever riding a bike and you made me try to ride one anyways, I’d still be able to do it because my muscles know how, even if I can’t consciously figure out how I’m doing it. It’s like that – I like him because my brain knows how, even though it’s not explaining any of it to me.”

Gansey studied him for a moment. There was a question burning at the back of his mind, pressing against his skull in an effort to get free. The researcher in him wanted to ask Adam to explain his feelings for Ronan in complete detail; the Gansey who was Adam’s friend – who was Ronan’s friend, too – knew better than to press this, though. This wasn’t something he could meddle in, not to mention the question of the impact that any of this might have on them: if he gave them a summary of everything that they were to each other, could it be possible that they would never regain the memories for themselves?

“So, you like him, but you don’t understand why you like him,” Gansey summarized. _Like_ was suddenly starting to seem like the wrong word; Gansey was beginning to wonder if their conversation had a depth beyond the reforming friendship between Ronan and Adam. Gansey hated to be pushed into discussing topics he had already placed off limits.

Adam shrugged. “He’s always so angry,” he confided. “How can I be okay with that?”

Gansey grimaced; this was now _two_ conversations he didn’t want to be having. In a cautious attempt to find the safest way through the exchange, Gansey said, “Well, he’s not always like that. Ronan is very… defensive. Right now, he’s confused and he doesn’t understand what’s happening to him, and that’s making him lash out. Plus, you're like a stranger to him right now – he acted like he hated you for the first few months the first time, too.”

Adam nodded and looked away for a second. Very quietly, he asked. “What was he like, before?”

Gansey was quiet for a long moment, remembering Adam, several months ago, asking him this exact question. Of course, that had been in the context of the death of Ronan’s father, and Adam had already known the answer – he’d just wanted to hear it again. In the days leading up the official start of their relationship, Adam had had a lot of questions about Ronan, several of which he’d answered himself when Gansey hadn’t been able to find a response, as if he’d been using Gansey as a Ronan Lynch study tool. Gansey felt abruptly sorry for the sheer magnitude of information that Adam had lost. Nearly as much as Gansey was an expert on the life of Glendower, Adam had been an expert on Ronan. Gansey didn’t know who he’d be if he lost that piece of himself.

With a small hint of irony, Gansey gave Adam the same simple answer he’d given him last time: “He was happier.”

The last time, Adam had pressed for more information; for anecdotes and qualifiers and _do you think he can be like that again?_ (No, Gansey didn’t think that Ronan could ever be the same as he was, but he’d gotten awfully close over the last few months.) This time, Adam only sighed and asked, “Was I happier, too?”

Gansey frowned at him, wishing that he’d come up with a way to escape this conversation earlier. Truthfully, he wasn’t entirely certain of how to answer. Ronan tended to wear his happiness all over his skin, bursting out like a floodlight; Adam was quieter about his emotions, because he’d always had to be. Gansey knew that Adam had been happy, of course – it had been so clear in the small hints of affection: holding hands at Nino’s; kicking his feet across Ronan’s lap at Monmouth; the tenderness in his voice as they traded insincere insults. The problem was that Gansey had no way of measuring that against Adam’s emotions now, and though he hoped and suspected that the answer was yes, Gansey was not willing to make that judgment.

“It’s too soon to say,” Gansey said, not meeting Adam’s eyes.

“Oh,” Adam replied. “Okay.” Neither of them mentioned that Gansey had so easily come to a conclusion regarding Ronan’s relative happiness.

It suddenly felt like a breach of trust to be talking about this with Adam. It felt, suddenly, like talking about Ronan to Malory, or to the cashier at the grocery store. Gansey couldn’t imagine that Ronan would be pleased to find out that Gansey had spoken of him with a relative stranger. Even if Adam wasn’t really a stranger, Gansey couldn’t help but feel as if he owed Ronan an apology. None of this felt all right.

Gansey sighed heavily and restacked his pile of books. He hated to take books from the library before figuring out if they would actually be useful – it was so easy to lose books he wasn’t using – but the library was beginning to feel a lot less comfortable. “Come on,” he told Adam, lifting his books from the table, “We can go through the rest of these back at Monmouth.”

Adam nodded and closed his singular book. He followed Gansey to the circulation desk without another word.


	11. The Right Direction Along the Wrong Road

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam and Gansey return from the library.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so it's been another big gap between chapters, and I'm really sorry! Hopefully, I'll be able to decrease that a little for the next one.

Adam was quiet on the car ride back to Monmouth. He could tell that Gansey thought Adam was upset with him from the way his friend kept glancing at him across the car, but he wasn’t sure if Gansey’s guilt sprouted from the fact of whatever secret he was keeping, or from however close he may have gotten to revealing it.

Truthfully, Adam couldn’t seem to find it in himself to be annoyed at Gansey’s secrecy; somehow, he had no doubt that whatever it was that Gansey wasn’t saying, it was for the best – and, if it wasn’t, Blue wouldn’t be going along with it. It was difficult for him to wrap his head around the concept of the unconditional trust that had apparently infected his nervous system, but there it was nonetheless. Adam never would have imagined that he could place any part of himself in someone else’s hands, but try as he might, he couldn’t convince himself to seriously doubt his friends’ intentions.

So, really, Adam wasn’t upset – really, Adam was just thinking. It wasn’t even really that he was wracking his brain over what Gansey could have been keeping from him, either. Adam was too overwhelmed by the pieces of the puzzle he did have to worry about the ones he was still missing.

Adam thought about making a list of what he knew, but the idea just seemed ridiculous. Really, it would be something like: _1) Ronan Lynch has two brothers and a pet raven. 2) Ronan Lynch is really good at Latin. 3) Ronan Lynch has an infectious smile, when he bothers to use it._

Oh, that was just great – now Adam really _was_ making a list. This was not something he wanted to think about. Mostly – definitely. Especially that last one.

That was the problem, though; there were too many things that Adam didn’t want to think about with this whole situation. He didn’t want to question why it was that he and Ronan had forgotten each other. He didn’t want to know what it was that Gansey was hiding from him. In fact, he didn’t want to know _anything_ about who he and Ronan had been to each other before.

 _He cares about you so much,_ Gansey’s voice echoed in Adam’s head, setting off a deep ache in his chest. With all of his heart, Adam wanted that back, and it was the worst kind of selfishness. Didn’t he already have Gansey to care about him, more than he could even stand some days? Didn’t he already have Blue, and Noah? How could he let himself feel like that wasn’t enough?

People said that you couldn’t miss something you’d never had, but for all that Adam felt as if he’d never seen Ronan before a few days ago, he missed him. He missed whatever easy understanding they must have developed if they’d been the sort of friends Gansey had described.

 _Best friends,_ Adam suddenly remembered Blue saying, when she’d first given them the in-brief version of their relationship before. So, whatever Ronan Lynch was to Adam, it was somehow more than what Gansey was. Somehow, Ronan was someone he could trust – someone he could rely on if he ever needed to – _more than Gansey._ Such a profound connection seemed unfathomable and impossible.

 _I care about Ronan Lynch,_ Adam thought to himself, testing out the idea. _I care about Ronan Lynch more than I’ve ever cared about anyone._ It felt insincere, sort of like the nonsense sentences his mind would sometimes string together if he let his thoughts wander. At the same time, however, it resonated inside of him, the thought a mallet struck on a bell just right, leaving all of his nerve endings humming under his skin.

It frightened him to realize just how intensely he wanted to make that sentence true. It frightened him even more to think that a part of him already believed it. It was a heavy thought standing without any support beams. Letting himself believe such a thing was to ask it to collapse and crush him. Somehow, he thought that he might not mind –

“Adam,” Gansey broke in. Adam looked up from the dashboard, blinking away his mental crisis. They were sitting in the parking lot at Monmouth, the car turned off. The fact that he had completely missed the drive was far less jarring than the realization that he hadn’t noticed the drop from rattling, unhealthy engine to silence when Gansey had turned off the car.

“Yeah,” Adam said, then cleared his throat and tried again. “We should head in, right?” He didn’t move, not quite sure that he was ready to face Ronan again. He thought, briefly, that it might be better for him to _never_ see Ronan again. He was ready for the guilt that tore through him in a sickening wave, but he hadn’t expected the defiance that burned through him in its wake: somehow, for some reason, he was determined to make Ronan a part of his world again, even if he felt something akin to dread or nerves at the thought of it.

“Adam,” Gansey tried again. “Are you… okay?”

It was such a ridiculous question that Adam almost laughed. “Aside from not being able to remember someone who is supposedly one of my closest friends?”

“Well, about the library,” Gansey attempted reluctantly. “What I said?”

Adam shook his head, all hints of humor sucked out of the car. “It’s fine,” he said, looking down at his hands. “I’m just… having trouble fitting it in. You don’t understand, Gansey. I wouldn’t have thought that my life was missing anything before, but now you’re telling me that there’s this whole other person that I’ve forgotten about, and I don’t know how to make room for that.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” Gansey said slowly. “You don’t have to find room for Ronan – he was already there.”

“But it doesn’t _feel_ like it,” Adam replied, feeling frustrated. “I’m not sure I can – it’s just confusing. I _want_ to remember, Gansey; I really do. It’s just so…” He shook his head. “Maybe I’m a little afraid of it, too,” he confessed.

Gansey nodded sympathetically, which only served to set off a spike of irritation in Adam’s chest. Gansey couldn’t possibly understand what Adam was going through – no one could. No one except Ronan, that is, and that was really the joke of the whole thing, because maybe before all this happened, Ronan would have been exactly who Adam talked to about something like this. Now, however, Adam didn’t know Ronan anywhere near well enough to open up about something that he might very well be the only one feeling.

“I understand that it’s a difficult situation,” Gansey offered. “I can promise you that I will not stop until we know how to fix this. But… until then, please know that you can talk to me, about anything.”

Adam sighed. He tried to remind himself that Gansey was truly trying to understand, that he was sincerely trying his best to navigate this situation. It wasn’t Gansey’s fault that Adam was battling exasperation. _Don’t fight with Gansey,_ Adam reminded himself. Out of habit, he added, _Don’t fight with Blue._ Had there ever been a _Don’t fight with Ronan?_ Adam didn’t think so, but he couldn’t be certain of anything about Ronan.

“Can we just go inside?” Adam asked quietly. There was a dull ache behind his eyes, and he was tired of thinking about this. There didn’t seem to be any answers, and all he was finding were reasons never to think about Ronan Lynch ever again. In spite of this, he couldn’t convince himself that he didn’t want to go upstairs.

Adam got out of the car without waiting for Gansey to respond. He grabbed half of the books from the slumping pile in the backseat, and heard Gansey’s car door close as he was jogging up the stairs. Just as he was starting to wonder how to rearrange the books so that he could get the door open, it opened for him. Noah stood on the other side, looking at him with something like concern. Adam looked away.

“Hello, Adam,” Blue called from the couch. “I see you found some books.” She had her legs curled up underneath one of Gansey’s enormous textbooks. The sight was sure to stop Gansey in his tracks, but Adam’s momentary blank stare was for an entirely different reason.

“Uh, yeah,” he said finally. “Well, mostly Gansey found books. Um…” He hesitated, struggling to name the weird feeling forming inside his chest. Blue looked up and waved an impatient hand at him. Adam cleared his throat and tried to sound casual. “So, where’s Ronan?”

“Oh,” Blue said dismissively. She gestured to the door with the speeding tickets. “He’s in his room being antisocial.” There was something entirely too innocent about her smile as she added, “Why don’t you go get him so we can get back into it?”

Adam blinked at her, but before he could ask any questions, had he had any he could put into words, Gansey entered the room and very nearly dropped his stack of books on Adam’s foot. “Jane!” He exclaimed. “You’re – what are you – what are you reading?”

Adam raised an eyebrow at Blue’s wicked grin. He said, “Okay, so I’ll just get Ronan, then.”

“Oh,” Gansey said as Adam moved to set the books on the floor near Blue. “Oh, but –”

“Gansey,” Blue interrupted, “while he’s doing that, why don’t you come talk to me for a minute?” She patted the couch beside her invitingly. “Tell me all about the library. You didn’t offend anyone, did you?”

“Certainly not,” Gansey said, moving to perch beside her with his stack of library books. Adam left them to their conversation and headed across the room to knock on Ronan’s door. He had it figured out now, that strange feeling that was still making itself at home inside of him: this was the first time since losing his memory that Adam had been surprised _not_ to see Ronan. It felt like a move in the right direction, but along the wrong road.

Ronan didn’t respond to Adam’s knock, and Adam glanced behind him at Gansey and Blue speaking in low tones before knocking a second time and going straight for the door knob. Ronan was on his bed with his headphones on, and he had a glare prepared for whoever was interrupting him. It faltered when he realized that it was Adam. He pulled down his headphones. "Hey, Parrish," he said, too surprised to be incendiary.

“We’re back,” Adam said needlessly. Ronan raised an eyebrow, and Adam pressed on. “Right, so, did you want to get a look at the books? I think Gansey found a few interesting ones on psychology.”

Ronan shrugged, and Adam felt vaguely unsettled. Maybe, he realized with a start, it was because he was already so familiar with this room, but not with the boy it belonged to. It hadn’t even occurred to him to take a look around when he’d first stepped in, but he did now, and it felt surreal just how familiar this space was. He was _comfortable_ here, he realized, and this, too, felt like a move in the right direction along the wrong road. “I remember all of this,” he blurted out. Ronan stared openly at him, but Adam wasn’t ready to stop talking yet.

“All of it,” he repeated. “Your entire room. Isn’t that funny? I can so easily tell you that that bag of chips was a couple inches over the last time I was here, but I can’t even remember your favorite color.”

“What does that fucking matter?” Ronan asked.

Adam shrugged and closed the door. He walked over to sit on the edge of Ronan’s over-crowded desk chair. “Maybe it doesn’t,” he conceded. “But I said I wanted to get to know you." He splayed his palm in Ronan’s general direction, as if he was reaching out for something. He wasn’t going to beg, but he was going to ask: "Tell me something about you.”

“Gansey’s going to come looking for us,” Ronan said slowly.

Adam looked at him long enough to feel something tight and dizzying wrap around his insides. He felt more daring than he ever had in his life. “Let him.”


	12. The Taste of Forgetting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam and Ronan talk about some things, and they have no idea where each other's lines are.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I'm terrible about updating regularly. At this rate, I doubt this is going to be done before _The Raven King_ comes out. ~~Also, I don't know if I'll survive _The Raven King_ coming out.~~
> 
> Also, I am having way too much fun with the chapter titles; this one has basically nothing to do with the action, but I just liked it.
> 
> Anyways, Happy Easter! Hopefully, I'll have an update ready in a shorter amount of time next time.

Ronan didn’t know how to stop staring at Adam. No, more importantly, Ronan didn’t know how to get Adam to stop staring at him. _Words,_ he thought lethargically. If he were to say something to break this silence, it might also end the eye contact. Maybe the real problem was that Ronan didn’t know how to make himself want to end it.

_Stupid,_ he told himself. _This is stupid. Stop this. Stop it right now._ But he couldn’t. He wanted to convince himself that this pointless crush was something that wasn’t going to affect him. It was probably just the result of that sense of familiarity and mystery wrapped up in an attractive package. It wasn’t something he’d felt before – it couldn’t be. Ronan didn’t know what to do with the possibility that he might have liked Adam before.

_Please, please stop this,_ he thought at Adam. _I’m not strong enough to do it myself._ (Was that ache in his chest the result of a new infatuation, or was it his heart remembering a feeling that Ronan wasn’t ready to deal with?)

Somehow the answer to Ronan’s prayers, Adam slowly squeezed his eyes shut. He let out a long, low breath that seemed to wreck some part of Ronan’s composure, and he had to shut out the world for a moment, too. When he opened his eyes again, Adam had moved his gaze to the side of Ronan’s jaw, which somehow felt both safer and more terrifying. Why wouldn’t Adam stop looking at him?

Adam cleared his throat. “Right, so… Okay, I – I go to Aglionby on scholarship. I mean, you probably already figured that out, but… We’re supposed to be friends, so I guess that’s something you ought to know. Maybe that’s just stupid. I don’t know.” Adam finally looked away, his face tinted slightly red. “This is harder than I thought it would be,” he admitted.

Ronan took in a breath and tried to seem like he wasn’t scared out of his mind. “We can take turns,” he offered. At the moment, he felt as though there wasn’t much he wouldn’t offer Adam, and that terrified him a little bit. But Adam – Adam looked so nervous, and Ronan just wanted to fix that. He found Adam’s eyes because he needed to, and he said, “You are so much braver than I am.”

Adam gaped at him. It looked like he wanted to laugh, or cry, or maybe both. “That’s not true,” he said.

Ronan stared him down. “I never lie.”

This time, Adam did laugh. “That’s funny,” he said. “That’s –” He broke off and his face morphed into a wide-eyed stare as Ronan watched him with a blank expression. “You aren’t serious,” Adam said in disbelief. “That – that doesn’t sound… practical.”

“Wasting your breath on something you don’t mean doesn’t sound practical, either,” Ronan replied without passion. He remembered a version of this conversation from when he’d first met Gansey. Trapped by his political obligations, Gansey had been both in awe of Ronan’s absolute honesty and unable to understand it. Eventually, he’d learned that Ronan was able to get away with it only because he was stubborn and didn’t care if he offended people. Also, Ronan wasn’t sure if Gansey had caught onto this or not, but intimidation by silence was a far more entertaining alternative to lying.

Adam shook his head. “You,” he said. “You don’t seem real. Are you an actual person? I mean, I don’t – I don’t know anyone who could do that. I don’t know anyone who would want to.”

Ronan grinned as wide as a shark. “You do, though,” he pointed out. “You know me, Adam Parrish, whether you want to or not.”

Adam made a face. “Ugh, don’t remind me,” he said, but Ronan could hear the joking tone of his voice. The smile on his face was softer than Ronan could remember seeing it, although that wasn’t a long history. It hit him, with a sudden pang of regret, that he might never remember the first time he’d seen Adam smile. Even if he got his memories back, it was possible that the moment of Adam’s first smile to him had passed unspectacularly and without notice, as most moments do. It was possible, too, that Adam’s smile had been overwritten in his mind so many times that it no longer warranted notice. If that was the case, Ronan didn’t think that he wanted his memory back, after all.

“What?” Adam asked. Ronan blinked at him, uncomprehending, “You’re staring at me?”

Ronan shook himself. “I don’t really get this whole thing,” he confessed, because that was the safest thing to admit to. “It’s weird, right? All these things that we’re supposed to know about each other, but we don’t?”

Adam nodded soberly. “Sometimes I feel like I know you,” he said. “Sometimes I get these… impressions of who you are, and know without a doubt that it’s true. But then I realize that I don’t even know your birthday, or your middle name, or your favorite subject in school…”

“I hate school. It’s a bunch of dumb shit that people never actually learn from,” Ronan offered, and Adam rolled his eyes. “Latin isn’t the worst thing to ever happen to humanity, though.”

Adam laughed. “You’re a Latin nerd,” he said, sounding delighted. “I mean, I kind of knew that – you’re top of the class, and the offensive things you write on the board are actually _in_ Latin. But to hear you confirm it!” Ronan could feel his ears growing hot. If Adam was friends with Gansey, it was probable that he, too, had a passion for some area of academic exploration. That, however, did not mean that Ronan didn’t feel a little ridiculous for his own obsessive study. He looked away.

“No, hey, Ronan,” Adam pushed back against the walls that Ronan was allowing to fall into place. Adam’s hand was suddenly touching his, and every time Ronan tried to make sense of that situation, he came to the impossible conclusion that Adam must have reached out for it. “I didn’t mean it in a bad way.” His local accent was endearingly conspicuous.

“I know,” Ronan said quietly. He made the mistake of meeting Adam’s eyes, and suddenly his walls were turned back to rubble. “It’s just… when people look at Gansey’s obsessions,” he said, “they call him incredible. They look at Blue and call her eccentric. They look at you, and they probably call you ambitious. But when they look at me –” He shook his head.

“They’re scared of you,” Adam guessed, which maybe wasn’t the direction Ronan had been going, but he sometimes thought too much about that, too. “You do it on purpose. Push people away, I mean.”

Ronan looked at him for a long moment. “I’m not pushing you away right now.”

“No,” Adam agreed, steadily maintaining eye contact, “you’re not.”

Ronan looked down and realized with a start that Adam hadn’t let go of his hand. It had seemed so easy, so familiar that both of them had forgotten he was doing it. Ronan tightened his fingers around Adam’s without thinking about it, not wanting the moment or whatever it was to end. “Parrish,” he said carefully, “I’m not… I’m not fucking normal.” He didn’t know why he said it, except that it was true, and he felt like he needed to for some reason.

Adam gave his fingers a brief squeeze. “None of us are,” he replied easily. Ronan was unclear as to whether Adam was referring to the five of them, or the human race in general. It was possible that it didn’t matter.

Ronan let his gaze wander up closer to Adam’s eyes, though he couldn’t quite meet them. “Yeah,” he said, “but I can take shit out of my dreams.”

“You can…” Adam trailed off. He studied Ronan as if looking for some hint of a joke, but Ronan could meet his eyes now, and he was only telling the truth. “Okay,” Adam said slowly, dragging out the word. “Okay, so…”

“You don’t believe me,” Ronan accused, though he didn’t put much heat into it. He frowned, remembering his proof from the first time he’d been through this. “I don’t think you did last time, either. Doubting Thomas.” The words tasted strange on his tongue – the taste of forgetting. He couldn’t quite piece it together into a coherent memory, but it was enough to know that there was _something_ there. The burst of relief made Ronan realize that he hadn’t be certain, before, that his memories really did exist inside of him, no matter what Maura Sargent had said.

Adam had a strange look on his face, like he could feel the edge of a memory slipping through his fingers, too. “It’s not that,” he said finally, slowly. He studied his hands as he spoke. “I believe you. I think I know that’s true.” He looked up. “I’m not really in a position to judge, anyways,” he offered with a shrug. “I sacrificed myself to Cabeswater.”

Now Ronan was the one left staring. He wasn’t searching for confirmation or refutation, however; he believed without question that Adam was telling him the truth right now. Instead, he was attempting to reconcile this new information with the impression he’d had of Adam Parrish, who he’d previously thought would be able to penetrate the world of magic and Cabeswater only as much as Gansey – that is, as an observer. Maybe that was a bit unfair to Gansey, who so desperately wanted an in to the world of long-sleeping kings and trees that used words, but that was sometimes how it felt to Ronan. Being the Greywaren had the power to isolate him, and his friends could only watch as he battled against himself. It was possible that was how Adam felt, too.

Ronan thought back to the night Cabeswater had been woken. It had needed a sacrifice, he knew, but Gansey had been adamant about erring on the side of caution. Somehow, they’d still ended up at Cabeswater. In the BMW, not the Pig. “You stole Gansey’s fucking car,” Ronan concluded in awe.

Adam’s face turned red. “You, uh, remember that?”

Ronan shook his head. “I pieced it together. What the fuck, Parrish? You have your own piece of shit on wheels. What did you need Gansey’s for?”

“Well, I didn’t _have_ my own car then,” Adam defended. “Look, I stand by it. We needed to wake the ley line, and we needed it to be one of us who did it.” He nodded decisively, as if that settled the matter for him. The way he was looking at Ronan, though, with a piece of his lower lip between his teeth, seemed to indicate that he wasn’t sure that Ronan would feel the same way.

Ronan rolled his eyes. “Hey, better you than someone we don’t know. I mean…” He rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously. “I don’t know you now, but I guess I must have known you then. Man, this is fucked up. Do you understand any of this? Because I sure as fuck don’t.”

“I don’t think we’re supposed to understand it,” Adam said coolly. There was something eerie and attractive about the shape of his eyes, and Ronan was suddenly at a loss for how he could have missed the magic trapped behind Adam’s smile. Something about that lit a spark of anger inside of him.

“Fuck that,” Ronan replied. “Don’t you want to remember? Don’t you want to know why we fucking forgot?”

Adam shrugged. “That would be nice,” he admitted. “But sometimes the world doesn’t give you what you ask for.”

“So you fucking make it,” Ronan snapped. “Come on, Parrish! Are you just going to put up with the shit the world throws at you for your entire fucking life? Isn’t there anything you’d fucking fight for?”

Adam’s expression turned dark. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he snarled. “I never _stop_ fighting! Do you know how hard I work to get a _scrap_ of the shit you have fucking handed to you?”

There was something almost surprising about Adam standing up for himself. Or, maybe not surprising, but impressive; Ronan didn’t know many people who, when he pushed them, pushed right back. If anything, that only made this worse. He didn’t know how to deal with Adam hating him over something he hadn’t decided for himself. “Oh, boohoo,” he snapped. “You grow up in the dirt, so you try to throw mud. Well, fuck –”

“No, fuck _you_!” Adam interrupted. “You’re such a fucking asshole! I’m fucking glad I don’t remember you!”

“Yeah?” Ronan spat, too busy turning every emotion in his body into anger to give himself time to process what Adam was saying. “Well –”

This time it was the door crashing open and Blue Sargent in the pose of an annoyed parent that interrupted him. “Can’t we leave you two alone for five minutes?” she asked irritably. “You know, I should have known it was too much to ask that you guys would stop fighting just because you don’t remember doing it before.” She glared at them in turns. “At least one of you is leaving this room with me right this second.”

Adam sighed and got to his feet, looking resigned and tired, as if most of his anger had burned out of him already. Ronan didn’t know how he could do that. He kind of felt like a bomb that hadn’t gone off properly; he’d been so prepared to get torn apart, but instead he was left still packed full of explosives, and he didn’t know how to safely dispose of them.

Adam was already halfway to the door, but Ronan shoved off his bed and pushed past him and Blue on his way into the main room. “Get the fuck out of my room,” he instructed without looking back, not caring that that had already been Adam’s plan.

From the couch, Gansey looked on with a concerned expression. Ronan wondered for a brief moment how Blue had convinced him to let her handle the escalating argument, and then wondered for a slightly longer moment why she would have wanted to. At the moment, he didn’t particularly care. Gansey opened his mouth, probably to say something that he hoped would diffuse Ronan’s anger. Ronan wasn’t sure that such a phrase existed, so he cut Gansey off. “I’m going to the Barns,” he announced.

Gansey frowned. “You’ll be back for school tomorrow?” he checked.

Ronan twisted his mouth into something that he felt involved an appropriate amount of teeth and malice. “Yes, mom,” he mocked. “Chainsaw!” The bird looked up from the pile of Gansey’s trash that she was picking at, cocking her head. Ronan held out an arm to invite her onto his shoulder, and she happily obliged.

“Don’t call me,” Ronan commanded as he stomped towards the door.

“Ronan,” Gansey started, but the rest of his sentence was lost to the sound of Ronan slamming the door. He stowed Chainsaw carefully on the passenger seat of the BMW before shoving himself into the car and tearing out of Monmouth’s parking lot. He was halfway to the Barns before he realized that he wished he hadn’t left

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "[Adam's] voice was dubious.  
> "'Doubting Thomas,' Ronan sneered, but without much vitriol."  
> \- Page 8 of _The Dream Thieves_ , in case anyone was wondering.


	13. Flickers of Something

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blue and Adam talk about what happened with Ronan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, this basically turned into a bunch of emotional rambling about Blue and Adam's friendship... I'm going to post it anyways.

Blue frowned as she peered into Ronan’s room. Adam was too busy staring after Ronan to notice her scrutiny, and Blue took the time to note that Adam looked slightly startled, and very tired. Of course, Blue sometimes thought that Adam had been tired since she’d met him, but it still troubled her to see him like this.

Blue had never known Adam to be so wrapped up in his own head that he didn’t notice when someone was worrying about him, but he didn’t even seem to see her. She wondered for a moment if Adam _had_ been this way before, if she’d somehow missed it by being too caught up in her own secrets and tragedies, and she felt abruptly terrible. She called Adam her friend, but she couldn’t even say for certain that she would always notice if something was bothering him. Maybe that was the way that Adam wanted it, but Blue couldn’t bear the thought that someone she loved was slipping away from her while she did nothing.

Adam blinked suddenly, and his eyes refocused on Blue. “Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked.

Blue shook her head. “Are you okay?” she asked. “What did Ronan say?”

Adam shrugged, glancing past her to Gansey. Blue hadn’t been able to make out just what Adam and Ronan had been arguing about, but she could guess from that look that it had taken a step over class lines. She glanced at Gansey also, considering. It only took her a second to make her decision.

“You,” Blue said to Gansey, “sit tight for a bit. Adam and I are going to have a quick chat.”

Adam looked surprised. “We are?” Blue ignored him as she stared Gansey down, attempting to intimidate him into compliance via nonverbal communication. It didn’t work.

“Jane,” Gansey started, that hinted warning that Blue hated so much coloring the edges of his tone. “I’m not sure –”

“Great,” Blue interrupted before he could finish. “Don’t worry; we’ll be quick.” She hoped that he heard the undercurrent of _I won’t tell him anything he doesn’t need to know,_ or that he knew otherwise that she wouldn’t risk their friends’ memories any more than he would. Blue, however, did not watch Gansey to ensure that her point got across. Instead, she stepped across the threshold into Ronan’s room and closed the door behind her.

“Sit,” Blue commanded, stalking towards Adam as a means of pushing him further into the room. Adam looked as if he was about to return to his spot on the messy desk chair, but after a glance at Blue, he took up residence on the bed. Though she knew he couldn’t help the values he’d been raised with, it irritated Blue to think that Adam was trying to save her from having to sit on a boy’s bed, as if her entire world wasn’t already overrun by boys and their _things._ More than that – as if she couldn’t handle it herself. Blue would rather be run through by a sword than have someone else shield her from it – she was too short to allow for someone to stand between her and the rest of the world.

None of that mattered, though, because this was about Adam, and Blue was perfectly willing to put aside her self-righteous crusades if it meant that she was better equipped to help her friends. She took two quiet, calming breaths and sat beside Adam on the bed. “Talk,” she ordered in a clipped tone.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Adam said, though he clearly did.

Blue took a page out of Ronan’s playbook and kept silent until Adam decided to elaborate. She took the opportunity to take a look around Ronan’s room, since she got so few chances to peer into the life of her most volatile raven boy. Ronan somehow managed to act like he was an open book while hiding some of what was most important to him, and Blue would gladly glean any insight she could from the state of his things.

Ronan’s room, Blue thought, named itself _masculine_ and _teenaged_ in an entirely different way than did the section of the main room dedicated to Gansey’s bed and desk, in a way that Blue could see hints of in the rest of the apartment. It held these titles in a way more similar to the fridge situated next to the toilet than to the dryer beside the shower, but perhaps it did so with more intensity.

The floor was a gathering place for discarded items of all varieties – notebook papers and worksheets, both graded and incomplete, were utterly at home within the mess; textbooks were kicked half-under dressers and other bits of the carnage; a ruined bird cage rested beside a pristine and unused one; smashed remnants of one or more black and expensive-looking things were littered throughout. There were clothes as well, especially components of the Aglionby uniform, flung into areas that suggested Ronan hoped never to see them again. Blue spotted one relatively worn sweater in a corner, apparently functioning as a nest for Chainsaw, and looked away quickly. The open mouth of an unfinished bag of chips gaped at her from the desk, offering stale snack food and potential bacterial growth. Blue wrinkled her nose, wondering how anyone could think these conditions livable.

“I don’t know,” Adam said quietly, drawing Blue’s attention back to him. It took her a moment to remember that she’d been waiting for him to explain what had led to the argument with Ronan, and not how Ronan could possibly consider this room an acceptable living space. Adam continued, “We were talking about the memory thing, and he just got really upset all of a sudden.”

Blue frowned. “What were you saying right before he got upset?”

Adam studied his hands. “I just said that I wasn’t sure we’d ever figure it out. I don’t think we should hold out hope for whatever magic to undo itself. We have to move our lives forward from the hand we’ve been dealt. Only, I guess I didn’t get to that part.”

Blue sighed. “Well, Ronan likes being told there’s nothing he can do about as much as you do,” she said.

Adam offered her a wry smile. “Yeah, I may have gathered that.”

“Really, I’m surprised that you’d be okay with just moving on from this,” Blue pressed, feeling a little curious. “Adam Parrish, giving up just like that?”  
Adam offered her an unimpressed look. “I’m not giving up,” he replied coolly. “I’m just not putting my life on pause until I get an answer. I would very much like to find one, but it’s going to take a long time, if we ever figure it out. With this kind of stuff, there might not be a rational explanation.”

“That is complete nonsense,” Blue contradicted. “How do you know that there isn’t one? Maybe you just have to find it.”

Adam shook his head. “I’m not like Gansey, Blue,” he said. His voice was desperate and sorrowful; though he wanted her to understand him the way he was, he wished simultaneously that he could be someone else. “I can’t spend my entire life looking for something I’m not sure even exists. That would be like if you spent your entire life looking for a reason that your entire family is psychic and you aren’t.”

That stung a little, though Blue didn’t think that Adam had meant it to. The thing was that Blue had already spent a greater portion of her life than she cared to admit pondering that exact question. She had spent nights wondering why she different, or why she was ordinary – the question depended on her mood at the time, as did her opinion of which of those options was better. So much of Blue Sargent’s young life had been tied up in wondering how much she was defined by the things she could never change, and she had forgotten that there was still plenty of room to define herself. When those constraints had been all she’d focused on, the world had felt far too small to allow for her to grow.

As she thought about what Adam had said, Blue realized that even though she had given up that crushing need to know _why,_ she had never quite given up the belief that there _was_ a reason. She had simply chosen to accept that the answers wouldn’t come to her just because she wanted them to, or because she yelled very loudly. Blue truly believed that somewhere out there, someday, she would find her answers, her _something more._ Somehow, although she abhorred fate, she couldn’t shake her belief in it. She had only become convinced that it would never find her while she was searching for it.

“Adam Parrish,” Blue said slowly, appraisingly. “I do believe that you are very clever.”

Adam scoffed. “Don’t sound so surprised.”

Blue shook her head. “I’m not,” she replied. “Just… Well, you don’t typically share your wisdom with the rest of us. Probably some of that ‘magician never reveals his secrets’ bullshit.”

“Magician,” Adam repeated slowly, looking around towards Ronan’s door as if he expected him to reappear. There was a puzzled look on his face that gave Blue hope for the half-second before he shook it away. Though Adam had just said that he wouldn’t waste his time seeking answers, the eyes that were boring into Blue were full of questions. “Is this strange for you?” he asked. “Or is it just me – just us – who are feeling lost?”

Blue laughed a little, and it came out sounding slightly bitter, though she wasn’t angry at Adam. “Of course it’s strange for us,” she replied. “You and Ronan were –” She stopped herself just in time to avoid revealing the secret.

“What?” Adam asked, grasping onto her near-admission like a lifeline. “What about me and Ronan?”

Blue gave him a half-serious look. “I thought you said you didn’t want to know.”

“That’s not – I don’t want to waste my time figuring out why,” he repeated. “But I do want to know –” He gestured around the room, as if a single enclosed space could hold everything that he had forgotten. “Ronan,” he decided after a moment of contemplation. “I want to know Ronan.”

Blue nodded slowly. “Okay,” she said. “You want to know Ronan. Do you –” But she couldn’t ask if Adam was having feelings for Ronan. Asking that would only invite a discussion she couldn’t condone, both because she had promised Gansey and because Gansey’s reasoning had been sound: she couldn’t risk disclosing that information without knowing what kind of impact it would have. Obviously there was potential for a great reward, if Adam and Ronan somehow regained their memories and resumed their relationship, but there was far too great a risk. Blue was not willing to accept the risk that Adam and Ronan could end up torn further apart by such a revelation. Adam was right; it was better to wait this one out.

After waiting a moment to see if Blue would finish her question, Adam looked away. He looked pensive, but Blue couldn’t tell what he was thinking. For a brief, petty second, Blue let herself think that Adam was making this harder on her than it needed to be – it had been so much easier to guess what Ronan had been feeling. Once she’d become familiar enough with him, she had realized that Ronan wore his heart on his sleeve, albeit tangled up and half-hidden in anger and words so painfully honest that they sounded like lies. But Adam, no matter how well Blue got to know him, kept his heart underneath, concealed just like every other part of him that had been hurt.

But, Blue thought, there had to be something there. She had seen those flickers of _something_ – of memory or attraction or whatever, but it had been there. Adam felt something for Ronan, and maybe he didn’t know what to do with that, but Blue wasn’t sure she could bear watching the two of them suffer through it. She was afraid to push, but like Adam had said, they needed to move on with their lives, not get stuck living in a past they couldn’t remember.

“I think you should talk to him,” Blue offered.

Adam eyed her warily. “That didn’t go so well the last time,” he said.

Blue eyed him back. “That didn’t count as communication,” she judged. “You need to actually _say_ what you’re thinking. And don’t let him under your skin.”

Adam met her eyes, or almost met her eyes – more like he was looking just below though. In a rare moment of painful honesty, he admitted, “I don’t think my skin’s thick enough to keep him out.”

Blue felt a flare of sorrow cut through her chest. She wiped it off her face and hoped Adam didn’t misinterpret it as pity. Reaching out to hold his two hands between her own, she said, “You listen to me, Adam Parrish: you are a lot stronger than you think you are. You are a survivor, whether you’re facing your father, your classmates, or your friends.” She paused to let that sink in. “No matter what happens with you and Ronan, I am your friend, and you can come to me with anything. Okay?”

Adam met her eyes in earnest this time. “I know,” he said steadily, almost as if he couldn’t believe that she thought he wouldn’t know that. It was a brave façade for an insecure boy, and Blue felt a surge of affection for Adam, the boy who never gave up; for Adam, the survivor; for Adam, her friend.

Blue squeezed his hands. “Don’t forget,” she instructed him. “And don’t let Ronan scare you. He won’t ever say it, but he appreciates that you call him on it when he goes too far.” She moved one hand up to Adam’s cheek. “You make him a better person, because that’s what you do for all of us. And don’t you ever let anyone tell you otherwise.”

Adam’s face colored itself red, and he looked away. “That’s awful nice of you to say,” he mumbled.

Because he was Adam, Blue knew that he didn’t quite believe her, but the best she could do for him was to say it, and then say it again. “Adam,” she said sternly, waiting until he at least moved his line of sight closer to where her face was. “Don’t let yourself believe in mean words. They aren’t going to get you anywhere, even if you’re the only one saying them.” She frowned. “Maybe especially if you’re the only one saying them.”

Adam sighed. “It’s one thing to think that,” he said, “and another to live by it.”

Blue let a ghost of a smirk play across her lips. “Isn’t that always the case?” she pointed out. She pushed herself up from the bed and dragged Adam up with her. “Come on,” she said. “We shouldn’t leave Gansey unsupervised for this long; who knows what kind of trouble he could get into?”

Adam laughed quietly, and Blue let herself use that as evidence that no matter how this thing turned out, he was going to be okay, and that maybe Ronan would be okay, too. _Please, please,_ she thought, _let them be okay._


	14. The Warmth of Friendship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lunchtime at Aglionby.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so to be clear, I haven't read _The Raven King_ yet, because I have finals next week and being emotionally destroyed by that book doesn't seem like a good study strategy. So, yeah, none of this is going to bring in anything from TRK, but I'm about 97% sure that this plot won't jive well with the TRK plot anyways. ~~I didn't think when I started this that I'd still be writing it by the time TRK came out.~~
> 
> So, yeah, anyways, I just wanted to request that you **please don't comment any TRK spoilers** , both for my sake and for the sake of anyone else who might not have read the book yet. (And don't yell at me if I got Henry's characterization completely wrong - I basically wrote him as a peppier version of Gansey.) Any other comments, as always, are greatly appreciated.

Adam paused just inside the cafeteria, hand clenched tightly over the mouth of his bagged lunch. From the entrance, he could see the table he usually sat at with Gansey – with Gansey and Ronan, apparently. (Once in a blue moon, Noah made an appearance, but he certainly couldn’t be counted on.) Yesterday, Gansey had already been at the table when Adam had arrived in the cafeteria; today, it was only Ronan.

 _I am not avoiding Ronan,_ Adam told himself. However, that assertion was a bit of a hard sell when that was exactly what he was doing. It wasn’t as if he had meant to, but the wave of relief when Ronan hadn’t shown up in Latin until just after the sub, too late to talk, had been too great for him to look forward to being alone with Ronan anytime soon. Really, the only reason that Adam was avoiding Ronan was because he wanted to talk to him. Really, the only reason that Adam was avoiding Ronan was because he thought that Ronan didn’t want to talk to him.

Well, really, there was also the fact that it felt a little strange to go up to Ronan’s table and sit with him. They hardly knew each other, or at least it felt that way. Or maybe it felt like they knew each other more deeply than Adam could ever imagine knowing anyone he didn’t have memories of prior to four days ago.

And maybe that filled him with a particularly awful brand of fear: the kind that you know that you will have to face, even though you have no idea how. It was the same fear Adam felt when he tried to imagine himself living that future that he wanted so terribly, except with Ronan, he couldn’t just stop thinking about it. This wasn’t something he could push off until some indeterminate _later_ , but he so fervently wished that he could that it left a dull ache in his chest.

 _Not here_ , Adam bargained with himself. He told himself that it just felt wrong to speak of magic and misunderstandings in the school cafeteria. He told himself that it would be irresponsible to invite Cabeswater in this space, so full of normal people and their oblivion. After all, it was only polite to wash off the salt and the sand from the ocean before stepping into the public pool. It would be rude to dump out a bucket of the briny and untested waters of Cabeswater, or whatever magic this was, in the midst of these boys, so used to their carefully chlorinated world.

Adam sighed. He knew he was just stalling, and it wasn’t as if they hadn’t discussed Cabeswater or Glendower or even this most recent development within these halls. Perhaps the wild and unrestrained magic of their quest did not seem to fit under these fluorescent lights, but neither did they. At this point, it was impossible to separate Adam the person from Adam the person with magical connections. It was impossible for all of them – this strange magic had been infused into their bones, their blood, their skin, and everything in between. It was what they were made of.

“Parrish.” Adam started as Henry Cheng came up behind him and to his left. Henry quickly maneuvered around to his other side. He was accompanied by another boy Adam couldn’t remember the name of – some sophomore that he’d recruited to inherit his role of main headache for the Aglionby administration. The sophomore was obnoxious, but obedient, and he copied Henry’s expression of concern.

“Are you all right, Parrish?” Henry asked. “You’re kind of impersonating a statue here.” The sophomore snickered, because for all his proficiency at following Henry’s facial cues, he wasn’t actually a very pleasant person at all. Adam wondered if Henry was aware of this, and if he’d chosen the boy for that exact reason. Nothing motivated people more than wanting to rid themselves of someone they didn’t like. It was extremely likely that this sophomore would one day be an excellent lobbyist for a multi-billion-dollar company.

Adam shrugged away the attention. “I’m fine,” he said. His gaze drifted back to the table, still only occupied by Ronan.

Henry frowned. “Did you and Lynch have another fight?” he asked. “Hey, at least he showed up to school this time, right?”

Adam blinked at Henry in confusion, but Henry misinterpreted it – of course he did; who would ever imagine that Adam couldn’t remember Ronan? “Come on,” Henry said, “it’s pretty obvious something up, Parrish. You two are usually adjoined at the hip.”

The sophomore scoffed. “Yeah, or at the –”

“Hey, now,” Henry interrupted. “Don’t be crude.” He looked at Adam guiltily. “Not that – you know, not that’s there’s anything _wrong_ with – Well.” He laughed anxiously. “Go sit down,” he hissed at his lackey. The sophomore threw up a hand in protest or dismissal and retreated across the cafeteria with his tray.

Henry turned back to Adam. “Sorry. He can be a bit much at times. I hope he didn’t offend you.”

Adam stared for a moment because he just didn’t know how to respond to that. Could he ask what on earth Henry was talking about? No – of course he couldn’t. He was supposed to already know. He was afraid to find out.

“It’s… fine,” he said at length. “I don’t mind.” He wondered, though, if he was supposed to. If he was, it was more likely that Henry’s words would have been the culprit as opposed to the sophomore’s aborted statement. Henry clearly hadn’t meant any harm, but that only made his missteps a greater tragedy.

Henry nodded in relief at Adam’s assurances. “But seriously, Parrish,” he said, circling back, “are you okay? Whatever he did, Ronan’s a dick, right?”

Adam puzzled over this statement for a moment; he couldn’t explain it, but it irritated him to hear Henry say that. Even if Adam had thought it more than a few times himself, he felt a burn of annoyance at Henry’s agreement. Perhaps it was this certainty that Henry didn’t know Ronan anywhere near well enough to make that judgment, but Adam really didn’t, either. Perhaps it was just the fact that Adam was so acutely aware that there was a lot to Ronan that he didn’t know, and Henry seemed uninterested in finding out. Without thinking, Adam said, “He’s not, though. Not completely.”

Henry offered a sad look that Adam couldn’t even begin to interpret. “He’s good to you,” he said. “I guess that’s why you’ve put up with him. But, hey, if you need to get away from him for a bit – well, you’re welcome to join us for lunch.”

Adam looked skeptically at Henry’s table, currently hosting the sophomore and a couple of Henry’s friends. It seemed doubtful that Adam could stand to eat an entire meal with any of them. In an oddly personal moment, Adam realized that Ronan Lynch was the only person in this cafeteria that he _would_ want to sit with. It took him a moment to recover from this realization, and Henry seemed to take that pause to be Adam stalling until he could find a way to politely turn down the offer.

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Henry said. “You and Lynch have – well, I don’t get it, I suppose, but you two make sense in a way that –”

“Henry Cheng!” Gansey interrupted smoothly. “How are you? How goes your latest cause?”

Henry beamed at Gansey, Aglionby’s golden boy. If Henry could get Gansey to care as deeply as he did about any of his crusades, then the administration wouldn’t stand a chance. But Henry’s problem was that he was thinking too small for Gansey; Henry wanted Aglionby to be better for him being there, but that was precisely how Gansey felt about the entire world. Of course, it was also possible that the people who aimed for small changes were the only ones who ever managed to change anything at all.

“Gansey,” Henry greeted cheerfully. “Good, I’m good. My cause – well, it could always be going better, couldn’t it? Are you sure you don’t want to help out? You can’t tell me that you aren’t bothered by the gym showers?”

Adam, for one, could easily say that he wasn’t bothered by the gym showers – he couldn’t even say what it was about them that might have garnered Henry’s attention. Maybe the fact that Adam couldn’t find a fault with a working shower gave away his humble beginnings more quickly than any second-hand school uniform ever could. _I don’t belong here_ , he thought, and he was surprised at the twinge of _something_ that made him search out Ronan again.

“What was the problem with the showers, again?” Gansey asked, summoning Adam’s attention back to the conversation. Adam wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to feel relieved because Gansey didn’t know, either, or incensed because Gansey was asking for his sake. Maybe neither; maybe both. He had to put a lot of effort into not letting his eyes trail to Ronan once more.

Henry threw the hand that wasn’t holding his tray into the air, and he very nearly threw up the other one as well. Gansey’s own free hand darted out and steadied Henry’s tray before it could tip over. “Does no one care about the issues?” Henry lamented. “Come on, Gansey. The water pressure makes it feel like being sprayed by a fire hose! We’ve had at least three conversations about it!”

Gansey chuckled, transforming seamlessly from a 17-year-old Aglionby student into an adult humoring one. Adam realized suddenly that Gansey had only been teasing Henry, and he felt at once ashamed for getting so caught up in himself. Gansey said, “Well, I simply do not have the time to get involved in a campaign like this, but I’d be willing to brainstorm some plans with you over lunch. Unless – were you quite done with Adam here?”

Henry and Gansey both turned to Adam, Henry seeming to just remember that Adam was there at all. “Oh,” he said. “Yes, we were just discussing the latest break-down in the Parrish-Lynch era. Parrish, I did say that you were welcome to talk to me about that whole thing anytime, didn’t I?” He waved off his own question without waiting for Adam to reply. “No matter; I’ve said it now. Seriously, I’m willing to listen if you ever need to talk.” He offered a smile that almost fooled Adam into thinking that he couldn’t have any ulterior motives.

“That’s awfully nice, Henry,” Adam replied uncertainly.

Henry seemed satisfied with his effort, however, and turned back to Gansey. “Your table or mine?” he asked, grinning as though he’d just told a wonderful joke.

“Mine,” Gansey replied easily. “I suppose you need to inform your comrades? Yes? I will accompany you, then. Adam, we’ll meet you over at the table.”

“Oh,” Adam said, watching as Gansey led Henry over to the table of his friends. As the two of them went, he overheard Henry ask, “Is he going to be okay alone with Lynch?” and Gansey reply, “It’s only a small fight; they’ll be fine.” The fact that Gansey seemed to know exactly what Henry was concerned about only left Adam feeling more lost.

He frowned and headed for Ronan’s table. He forgot that he was feeling hesitant about being alone with Ronan for long enough that Ronan made sullen eye contact with him before he could think to falter. Adam took a deep breath and made it the rest of the way to the table and sat across from him. “Hey,” he said quietly.

Ronan grunted in greeting. After an impossibly long moment, he looked up and found Adam’s eyes. “Hey,” he said back.

Adam couldn’t explain the feeling spreading through his chest, but it made him smile nonetheless. He smothered it. “I’m sorry about yesterday,” he said. “I didn’t mean to offend you. I just meant –”

“Hey,” Ronan interrupted, “Parrish, it’s cool.”

Adam wrung his hands out on the table. “It’s not, though,” he said. “I think I made it seem like I didn’t want to remember you, and that’s not true at all. I just – I don’t want to be so busy looking for old memories of you that I don’t let myself make any new ones. That’s not fair to either of us.”

“Parrish,” Ronan repeated, “it’s cool. Don’t worry about it. Okay?” There was something tense about his voice, or maybe it was his shoulders. It was a minute and momentous change from his usual persona – something that another Adam had learned to recognize. It felt like cheating to be able to see it now, but there it was. He just had no idea what to do with it.

“Okay,” Adam said in a small voice. “Fine.” He tipped his bagged lunch on its side and pulled out his sandwich. It consisted only of a piece of cheese folded between two slices of bread, but it was more than he had some days. Adam removed half of the sandwich and returned the other half to the paper bag for his dinner later.

Ronan frowned at the Spartan meal Adam had laid out in front of him. “Is –” But he broke off without finishing his question. That was probably for the best, since he had probably been about to ask if that was all that Adam had brought for lunch.

Just to ease the tension a little, Adam said, “Gansey invited Henry to sit with us.”

Ronan scoffed. “Of course he did. You and I don’t know each other, and the only person he wants to talk to is buried under Henrietta, but why not invite someone else into this?” He sounded bitter, and Adam wondered if he was still upset over his original presumption that Gansey was replacing him with Adam.

Adam watched Ronan toy with the stem on his apple for a minute before he decided to speak again. “He wants to talk about the gym showers,” he confided.

Ronan looked up with an expression of horror. “Fuck, not the showers again.”

Adam laughed. “Yeah, I don’t know what his problem is. Maybe he’s afraid it’s going to wash off his principles.”

Ronan snorted. “That wouldn’t take much,” he muttered. Adam smirked at him across the table. In an instant, it seemed like the space between them dropped away. It was disorienting, and Adam was startled to realize how comfortable – how _familiar_ – this felt. He wondered if there were moments like this, or even better moments, among those missing from his life. Maybe there were moments worse than last night that had been lost, too, but remembrance of the chill of anger could only help him better appreciate the warmth of friendship. Abruptly, Adam found himself flooded with a rush of hatred for whoever or whatever had willed this forgetfulness into place.

“I’m sorry,” Adam said softly, though he didn’t entirely know what he was apologizing for.

Ronan shook his head. “You don’t have to be,” he replied, though it was unclear whether he knew what Adam was sorry for, either. Adam frowned, feeling as if he knew what Ronan meant, though he couldn’t seem to put that meaning into words. There was something pressing at the edges –

Henry slammed his tray onto the table, and the world came rushing back. Adam hadn’t even realized that it had been so far from his concerns before. Everything about Aglionby suddenly felt dull and artificial in comparison.

Henry was grinning like a normal teenaged boy, and it seemed like a terrible thing to intrude with. He said, “Nice, Parrish.” He held out a fist, which Adam hesitantly met with his own. Henry exploded his hand backwards with a “Whoosh!” His grin got impossibly wider, and he added, “I’m glad you guys could kiss and make up, you know? Good for you guys!”

“Henry,” Gansey said tensely, joining their party. “Leave them be. Let’s talk about your plan. How many points does it have?”

Henry, cheerfully diverted, took his seat and pulled a well-worn list from his pocket. “Okay,” he said, “so, part one of fifteen: research.”

Adam cast an amused glance at Ronan and raised an eyebrow expectantly. Ronan jerked his head towards Henry and rolled his eyes. Adam tried his best not to laugh, and he hoped that Henry didn’t notice. He only felt slightly bad for bonding with Ronan at Henry’s expense.

Adam had been hoping to talk with Ronan rather than listening to Henry’s plans for world domination, but Ronan looked down at his tray and began studying his lunch. Adam sighed soundlessly and went about eating his sandwich, trying to trick himself into thinking there was more to it by stretching out the meal. He tuned out Henry and Gansey and Ronan, and let himself get lost in the same circle of thoughts that had been spiraling through his head for the past several days. So, he was startled when Ronan moved three things into his field of vision.

Adam blinked, trying make sense of it. In front of him were a fruit cup, a bag of baby carrots, and an apple, all items that students were encouraged to take with their lunch for no additional cost. Adam looked up at Ronan questioningly.

Ronan shrugged. “I don’t like them,” he said, and Adam remembered seeing him throw out the same three items yesterday. It sent a rush of something akin to hope or optimism through Adam, and he tried to ignore it. But he couldn’t pretend that Ronan didn’t add, “I think I got them for you.”


	15. A Seed of Understanding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ronan decides to leave school a bit early.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry that I took longer than I meant to between updates! I know I say this every time, but I really am going to try to be better for next time!

By the end of the school day, Ronan was buzzing, electric. No – it was before the end of the school day. It had started at lunch: a seed of understanding, nurtured by jokes and burst into lively colors under the brilliant sunlight that was Adam accepting the food that Ronan had pushed over to him.

There was every indication that this should have been an underwhelming victory – a battle that shouldn’t have been won, but had been countless times before, and would be countless times again – but there still something so satisfying about finding success this time. It was a rush of joy like it was the first time that this particular offer had been accepted, though simply by the fact that throwing out the food yesterday had been off his routine, Ronan knew that wasn’t true. He wondered if it felt this good every time. He sort of hoped it did, and he didn’t know what to do with that. He didn’t know where to go from here.

“You’re still in the parking lot.”

Ronan blinked his eyes open and turned to find Noah in his passenger seat. “Well, apparently neither of us have anywhere better to be,” he retorted.

Noah raised an eyebrow in a way that didn’t seem quite physically possible. His grin alone could raise money for disciplinary programs. “You could be in class,” he pointed out.

“Ha,” Ronan scoffed. He really couldn’t be in class – not like this. Not when the whole world seemed to be expanding around him. With neither Gansey nor Adam, as he’d learned, in his last period class to notice his absence, there was not much that could get Ronan to attend once he’d decided that he wasn’t going. He added, derisively, “And you could be anywhere else in the world. Get lost; you’re getting ectoplasm on my seats.”

Noah laughed in the sort of way that people did when they were supposed to be insulted, but had decided that it would be better revenge to take their aggressor’s words as a joke. Noah, of course, had his own personal arsenal of prodding words as well. He gave Ronan a sly, sideways look and asked, “Are you waiting for Adam?”

Ronan started the car. “No,” he said, though he honestly wasn’t sure why he’d been waiting around in the Aglionby parking lot when he could have been halfway to the Barns by now. Choosing not to dwell on it, he tore out of the parking lot loudly enough that he may have managed to distract a class or two, which was always something Ronan was in favor of. He wondered if Adam was in one of those classes, and whether Adam was annoyed at him for disturbing the class. In the passenger seat, Noah laughed and lowered the window. Wind screamed into the car.

Ronan jabbed the button to turn the music on, back to the ear-bleeding volumes he’d previously set it to. “You know, I don’t recall inviting you,” he observed to Noah, shouting over the blaring music. “Why aren’t you bothering Sargent?”

“Maybe I am,” Noah said enigmatically. He didn’t raise his voice any more than usual, but Ronan heard him nonetheless.

Ronan scoffed dismissively, but he really didn’t have a response for that. He was fully aware that there was more magic in the world than could be understood by most people, but Ronan wasn’t used to being out of the loop. Everything that he knew begged for him to fully discard the possibility of a person being in more than one place at a time, but he also had enough experience with the impossible to know that there wasn’t really a limit on what could be done. Perhaps no ordinary person could manage such a thing, but Noah could be incredibly otherworldly at times.

“He’s going to wonder where you are,” Noah said, again at that strangely audible volume, bringing Ronan back into the present. Ronan’s mind immediately jumped to Adam, and he felt guilty because he thought that it should have jumped to Gansey. Noah added, “Don’t feel bad; he’ll understand once you explain.”

Ronan took his eyes off the road for a moment to scowl at Noah. He had a nagging feeling that Noah wasn’t having quite the same conversation that he was. He didn’t want to think about it too hard. He didn’t want Noah to keep talking about it, either, so he said, “Hey, fuck you, man. I don’t want your opinion.”

Noah laughed again. His cheer was putting Ronan in a bad mood. “I won’t tell,” Noah said. He was starting to fade out, turning more transparent, and Ronan had to turn the music off to hear him properly this time. Noah added, “But you will.” Then he was gone, and Ronan crossed the town line out of Henrietta alone.

Ronan didn’t turn the music back on for the rest of the trip. His triumphant attitude from earlier had slipped away and he didn’t know how to get it back. He parked the car on the side of the road just outside of Singer’s Falls; he didn’t like going home like this. The magic of the Barns always seemed to lift his spirits, but it was best when they were already high. He needed to find some way to bring himself back up before letting the Barns do it for him.

Before he could even think, Ronan was digging his phone out of his backpack. He stared at it for a long moment, unsure of why he had taken it out. It was _something_ – something important. He banged his skull back on the headrest and looked up at the roof of the car. He needed… He needed _something._

Ronan’s fingers distractedly unlocked his phone. He was hardly looking – hardly thinking – but his hands seemed to know what he didn’t. His fingers stilled, and he looked down. His phone was open to his pictures, and Ronan scrubbed a hand over his scalp in frustration; this wasn’t telling him anything. He was about to lock his phone and throw it aside when something caught his attention.

Ronan Lynch didn’t use his phone camera very often. He preferred to live life as it happened, rather than wasting his time trying to capture it. Trying to save happiness onto a tiny phone often meant taking a break from experiencing it, and that just seemed like a waste. So, Ronan was more than a little startled to see that his phone had several more pictures on it than he remembered. He tapped on the most recent one to get a closer look.

It was Adam, reclining on one of Aurora’s old picnic blankets, somewhere in the back fields of the Barns – Ronan could see the cluster of sheds and other buildings in the background. In the picture, Adam was laughing, his arm half-extended as if to push the camera away.

Feeling a little unsettled, Ronan swiped back to the previous picture. This one showed Adam lounging on one of the couches at the Barns, looking at home and perfectly fitted to the scene. The camera had caught him mid eye roll, but also smiling in a secret sort of way that made Ronan feel hollowed out and strangely sad. He didn’t know what to do with that.

Ronan swiped again: Adam lying on his stomach, doing homework on the bed in the small apartment above the church – _Adam’s_ apartment, Ronan realized. He understood in a rush what Adam had meant yesterday; he couldn’t even begin to comprehend how he could be so familiar with the space a person inhabited, and yet have such a huge blank for the person himself. It felt unfair, in more ways than one; they were both playing this game with cheat sheets, but they hardly knew how to read them. Ronan hadn’t wanted to take this test in the first place. He shook the thought out of his head.

Another swipe: Adam laughing and nearly falling off a picnic table as he tried to avoid the ice cream cone Ronan was trying to smash into his face. Ronan didn’t have any memory of the event, so he didn’t know who might have taken the picture, but he had the strangest feeling that it had been Matthew. Ronan kept looking and found several more nearly identical pictures – definitely Matthew. It was just like his younger brother to try to commemorate what Ronan hadn’t asked him to. Ronan always teased him, saying that they didn’t need so many pictures; the important things wouldn’t be forgotten. It struck him as rather ironic that he had proven himself wrong.

Sighing heavily, Ronan tossed his phone onto the passenger’s seat. It felt like there was something he desperately needed to remember, before it shredded him with its invisible presence. He didn’t think he was going to get there with a bunch of pictures on a phone, but it felt like the closest he had gotten to finding something that he wasn’t sure he was ready to know. After believing one thing for an entire lifetime, learning that the opposite was true could lead to ruination, and Ronan felt like he’d spent an entire lifetime not knowing that Adam Parrish existed.

But, Ronan had to admit to himself, it also felt like he’d spent an entire lifetime getting to know Adam Parrish, and the thought that all of that had just vanished, as if it had meant nothing – well, that was quite busily wrecking him, too. It seemed like there was no scenario here that didn’t promise suffering: this was a blissless ignorance, a ceaseless torment of possibility, but what was even more terrifying was the idea that what he’d forgotten could be worse than what he had now. _We bear the ills we have, rather than those we know not of, or some shit like that,_ Ronan mused. He’d never been one to fear the unknown, and secrets, in Ronan’s experience, tended to do the most damage while still hidden, but something about this particular hidden truth terrified him. Somehow, these felt like the highest stakes he’d ever played for.

“Fuck,” Ronan said softly, entirely for his own benefit. He needed the reminder that life was still going on, and that he hadn’t been robbed of the ability to participate in it. He felt like an idiot; he’d pulled this car over to find a way out of his own head, and he’d somehow dived in deeper instead. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to drown in that sea of thoughts. The problem was that Ronan didn’t quite know how to stop thinking about Adam.

 _He’s going to wonder where you are,_ Noah’s voice whispered through Ronan’s memory. Or maybe he was once again present – not enough to be seen or sensed, but enough to play his mind tricks. Ronan wished that he could be alone for just a minute, and then immediately changed his mind. He didn’t want to be alone; he wanted –

“Fuck this,” Ronan said, again solely for himself. Maybe a little bit for Noah, if he was there. He put the car back in gear and pulled it through a wide, screeching half-circle. He was going back to Henrietta.

Ronan curled his hands around the steering wheel tightly, creating a physical analog for the stranglehold he was trying to keep on his emotions. The thing about _home_ was that the longing for it was always worse when Ronan was _almost_ there than when it was too far away to feel like anything more than dream. To turn around when he was so close was to turn down a dream come to life right before him. It was an incredibly painful pang right through the center of his heart, but it was so terrible that Ronan wanted to keep feeling it. He thought that he should hate himself for that, or maybe the desire was just a side effect of him hating himself. He’d been so sure that he was finished with that pattern.

“Fucking fuck,” Ronan said to himself. This time, it benefitted no one. He wasn’t even sure why he was feeling this way – he only knew that it was somehow preferable to pretending that nothing was wrong. Because, really, so much was wrong – _he_ was wrong, and so was Adam, and so was everything. It felt like nothing made sense anymore.

It seemed like Ronan’s life was far too tangled up with Adam, or with the concept of Adam (and he wasn’t sure which was worse). People weren’t supposed to get this invested in each other so quickly. Except that Ronan might have already had all this space for Adam to take up in his life, and Adam was just filling in the places he was already meant to be. Maybe that was an even worse option. It was certainly a more terrifying one.

At the end of a drive that passed in a sickening blur, Ronan pulled into the parking lot of Monmouth Manufacturing. The Pig was already parked there, looking settled and content with the sinking sun catching on the orange paint. Ronan wondered vaguely just how long he’d been gone. He felt too detached to look at the dashboard clock, so he turned off the car instead. He chose to pretend that he didn’t see his phone still resting atop the passenger seat and headed into the building without it.

By the top of the stairs, Ronan was starting to feel more like himself. It wasn’t the Barns, but Monmouth was a sort of home to him, too, and Ronan felt a tiny thrill of relief at this proof that he didn’t hate himself enough to cut all of this out. He wanted to say that he didn’t hate himself at all, but he didn’t exactly trust his own head right now.

“Ronan,” Gansey greeted, looking up from whatever it was that he had spread out all over his desk. His expression was a mixture of disapproval over Ronan’s early end to his school day and surprise at Ronan’s early return. The disapproval, as always, won out in Gansey’s hierarchy of points to address. He said, very formally, “We missed you after school.”

Ronan, in spite of himself, felt his pulse falter. He crossed his arms to hold it in. “We?”

Gansey looked him over doubtfully. The gesture came mainly from a couple decades of carefully cultivated culture, but there was also concern underneath it; Gansey needed to reassure himself that none of Ronan’s limbs were falling off. Ronan didn’t know whether to be grateful or regretful of the fact that most of his battle wounds weren’t quite so visible.

“You haven’t forgotten Adam again, have you?” Gansey asked. His tone was dry, but there was worry underneath it, though Ronan couldn’t fool himself into thinking that it was concern only for him. Wishing it was made him feel like a terrible person, but not quite as terrible as the lightning-strike thought that maybe this would all be so much easier if he _did_ forget Adam again. Not quite as terrible as the undeniable fact that forgetting Adam was the absolute last thing that he wanted to do.

“No, shithead,” Ronan snarled. He needed it to sound mean, because if it didn’t, he would be giving far too much away. “Where the fuck is the runt, anyhow? I would have expected to see him kissing up to you and your fucking research or some shit like that.”

Gansey gave Ronan a stern look at his statement, but he didn’t bother to complain. “He’s working,” he said instead. He stared thoughtfully at his books for a moment before adding, “I think it might be the garage tonight?” But that was wrong, because it was Tuesday, and Ronan waited in the parking lot of the trailer factory just outside of Henrietta on Tuesday nights. He didn’t bother to voice the correction.

“I’m going to my room,” Ronan grumbled instead. He wasn’t quite sure that he wanted to engulf himself in even the relative solitude his room offered, but he did know that it wasn’t Gansey’s companionship he was longing for.

“Don’t forget to do your homework,” Gansey called after him, though it was more of an obligatory, throwaway comment than an expectation; Gansey had been disappointed enough times to know not to hope for Ronan to complete his homework.

Still, Ronan scoffed derisively. Without thinking, he said, “You sound like Parrish. It’s never gotten him anywhere, and he’s a lot prettier than you.”

The room stilled. Ronan had his hand extended halfway to his doorknob, and it took several seconds dripping in tension before he could make himself lower it. Behind him, Gansey said, “Ronan?” This, too, was tense and full of questions, and so was Ronan himself.

Ronan turned slowly. He couldn’t quite keep the emotion off his face, but he hoped that it would work to keep Gansey from asking too many questions. “I don’t,” he said, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted finish with _know_ or _want to talk about it._

Gansey let the sentence dangle uncompleted. “I know,” he said, “but I’m willing to listen if you ever want to talk it out.”

No, Ronan did not want to talk it out – not now, not later. He didn’t even want to say enough about it to _express_ that he didn’t want to talk about it. He owed more to Gansey than that, though, so he compromised on a single word: “No.” He turned away, and this time his hand made it to the doorknob.

“Ronan,” Gansey started, but Ronan cut him off with the satisfying slam of his door behind him. The bang reverberated with a spark of finality, but it was short-lived. Ronan breathed in the air of his empty bedroom, and he breathed out regret. He was surrounded by familiarity, but the landscape of his own mind was uncharted territory. He didn’t want to be here, but he didn’t particularly want to be anywhere else, either. Everything felt wrong.

In the corner of the room, Chainsaw cawed. Ronan tilted his head to her and considered whether retrieving her dinner from the fridge would take anything away from his recent dramatic exit. She cried for attention again, and Ronan crossed the room to her. He reached out two fingers, carefully avoiding her beak as she snapped at him, and smoothed the feathers on the back of her head. He felt marginally better, but also magnificently worse.

“I think,” he told her, “that you are the least complicated thing in my life right now.” Chainsaw cocked her head in reply, and then she pecked at his foot. Ronan made a face at her. “Brat,” he muttered affectionately and smoothed over her feathers again.

“Kerah,” Chainsaw replied. She flapped her wings at him, and then hopped over to investigate a scrap of paper on the floor. Once she’d pecked at it to her satisfaction, she swiveled her head back him and repeated, “Kerah.”

Ronan sighed. “Yeah, bird,” he said. “I know.” He snatched the open bag of chips from his desk and handed it off to her. She immediately poked her head inside curiously; hopefully, that would entertain her for a little while. At least one of them should be able to get briefly lost in triviality.

Meanwhile, Ronan stretched out on his bed and stared up at the ceiling, wondering about next steps. He needed answers, and he thought that he just might be prepared to go to extremes in order to get them.


	16. The Enormity of Want

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blue reads a psychology book and eats some yogurt. (That is the worst summary ever, and is maybe 10% of what happens in this chapter.)

Even after spending her entire life there, Blue was still surprised at the apparent fluidity of inhabitants at 300 Fox Way. Visitors and residents appeared and disappeared without notice or introduction, forgotten magazine subscriptions piled up on the counter for months after the addressee had moved on, and the occasional tenant Blue had assumed to have left weeks or years before would be suddenly spotted eating a granola bar atop the kitchen counter.

Today, a group of several women were gathered in the living room with various snacks, textbooks, and alcoholic beverages, watching as another pair of women attempted to wrestle a dresser around a corner that was proving less than accommodating. “You want some help with that,” Calla observed snappily. It might have been a question, but her tone suggested otherwise. Blue chose to focus on the psychology book in her lap and the cup of yogurt in her hand.

“No, no,” one of the women disagreed amicably, taking her hand off the dresser as if to wave away helpers, though no one had moved to assist them. “We’re fine.” That was clearly not the case, but Blue had yet to meet a family member who didn’t have at least a bit of stubborn streak. At least, she thought she remembered being told that this woman was related to her in some way – a great aunt, perhaps? She couldn’t remember the woman’s name, nor that of her companion. She also couldn’t remember whether she had any relation to the woman’s companion. In fact, Blue couldn’t remember ever even _speaking_ to the companion. She considered that she had possibly been quite snobbish in choosing which women in the house to pay attention to. She also considered that continuing to ignore them in order to focus on this research wasn’t doing anything to fix that pattern.

“You are going to break something,” Maura observed. “I’m thinking… lamp. But also possibly a hip. Those two are so easily confused, don’t you think?” She was directing this question at Calla, but Calla only responded with a curled lip.

 _Focus,_ Blue told herself. _Memory loss, even in the absence of a physical cause, may result from a severe psychological trauma._ She tapped the line in her book. She didn’t think that Ronan and Adam had experienced a psychological trauma – other than having their memories messed with, that is.

“Oh, don’t play your prediction game with me,” Blue’s relative complained, apparently having looked for the signs that Maura was joking and feeling irritable over not finding them. “Really, there ought to be some sort of rule that you have to _say_ when you’re actually predicting something, and when you’re just being an asshole.”

“You don’t have to be psychic to know that she’s right,” Calla snarled, not defensively but rather because she preferred to snarl whenever possible. “If it’s anything of mine, you’ll be paying for it.”

The companion shot a nasty look over her shoulder. “We got this thing in here, and we’ll get it out.”

“That’s what you said about the cat,” Maura muttered into her drink. The cat, a skinny but vicious creature which perpetually looked as though it had recently escaped from some sort of machinery, had been lured inside six years ago with a piece of the “good ham,” according to Calla. The act of charity had been quickly regretted, as the cat spent a great deal of time meowing loudly for no apparent reason and fought anyone to come too close. Also, it threw up on the rug. So far, no one had succeeded in evicting the furry invader. Cue: rehashed argument over the cat.

 _No, no, no. Focus,_ Blue thought to herself. It was impossible to concentrate in this house, especially when there was so much going on. She scooped out the last of her yogurt and set the cup to the side. This type of amnesia is theorized to be the brain’s way of protecting itself in times of extreme stress. Blue didn’t think that even self-preservation could yield such specific and symmetrical memory loss. But, with their lives as tangled up with the supernatural and otherworldly as they were, it was possible that that protection hadn’t been Adam and Ronan’s idea. Blue’s first instinct had immediately ruled out Cabeswater as a perpetrator of malicious memory tampering, but if the forest had truly believed that what it was doing was for the protection of its magician and/or its Greywaren…

No. Blue couldn’t believe that. What sort of magical mayhem could possibly have its roots in Ronan and Adam’s relationship? In them knowing each other at all? How could Cabeswater ever think that it was best to take these two boys who had already lost so much away from each other, too? And even if – and that was a big _if_ – this had been Cabeswater’s doing, it would certainly have explained itself by now. It would have spoken to Adam, at least.

Blue frowned. Actually, she couldn’t remember Adam mentioning _any_ communication with Cabeswater recently. That wasn’t particularly unusual – Blue got the distinct impression that Adam was far more immersed in that world than he let on – but surely he had tried to talk to the forest by now? Why wouldn’t he have mentioned it?

“No! All I’m saying is that I don’t want to keep the thing if you’re leaving!” Maura’s loud, frustrated voice cut over the background of bickering and jolted Blue out of her own head. She looked up to find, unsurprisingly, that no progress had been made either on moving the dresser, or on bringing the cat argument to an end.

“Excuse me,” Blue’s relative replied snidely, “he has a name.”

“Piece of advice,” Calla put in, “don’t name things that you don’t plan to keep.”

“You –” the relative started, but she was interrupted by a rather loud crash coming down the stairs.

“Speak of the devil,” someone muttered, because there was Gwenllian, carrying the aforementioned cat and singing loudly as she twirled her way through the kitchen. She was the only one in the house capable of catching the cat, possibly because she was the most determined to get her arms scratched. The poor thing growled unhappily as Gwenllian somehow squeezed her way around the dresser. She cackled happily and resettled the cat before looking around at the room as if noticing her audience for the first time. “Well, well,” she observed, “a pretty posse. Tell me, psychic, will I find love?” She didn’t seem to want an answer to the mocking question, though, because she laughed too loudly for any response to be heard.

“Gwenllian,” Calla said loudly once the laughter began to quiet, “since you’ve got that thing, why don’t you get it into a cat carrier for us?” She smiled, all teeth, at the women with the dresser. “You wouldn’t want to leave your sweet cat behind, would you?”

“Well,” the companion started, but then she stopped. The two of them exchanged a look, obviously stalling in an attempt to divest themselves of the feline menace.

“‘Well’ what?” Calla snapped. Another hesitantly exchanged glance. No one in the room seemed eager to jump to either side of this branch of the cat debate.

What would have been a tense silence was cut through easily by a shriek from Gwenllian, whose goal always seemed to be disruption or confusion. She spun in a couple of circles and began spouting a chant. “Festering, Festering, bad things grow!” she announced cheerfully. She looked over the gathered women, her expression professorial with a dash of wild-eyed humor. “Fear will rot you down to the bone!” she informed them with just as much cheer and rhythm as her previous statement.

“Gwenllian,” Maura started, “I don’t think –”

Gwenllian let out a shrieking laugh to interrupt her. She spun in another circle and chanted, “Secrets, secrets –” she paused and lifted the cat above herself, tilting her head as if she was listening to something he was saying, though all Blue heard was a low growl. Gwenllian huddled the cat to her chest again and looked out at her audience once more, her face lit as if by revelation. She added a last sing-song word to her line: “Memories.” Blue sat up straighter.

Gwenllian spun in a final circle and finished her chant with, “Murdering, murdering, in your sleep!” She rubbed the cat’s fur the wrong way and looked at him thoughtfully. “Nothing left of them for the ravens, then,” she noted. “Fear, secrets, memories, all. Gone, gone. Nothing more than nothingness.”

“What do you know?” Blue demanded immediately, desperately. Gwenllian was the absolute last place that she would ever want to get her information – Blue had never met a more cryptic and uncooperative psychic in her entire life – but she would turn to anyone who would help at this point.

Gwenllian turned slowly to face Blue, her lips curled in muffled amusement. It was the first time Blue had seen her do anything remotely close to restraining herself. “Don’t you worry, little lily,” Gwenllian told her, patting the head of the cat as she spoke. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“My – why would it be my fault?” Blue asked, feeling a bit flabbergasted. She looked at Maura. “Mom?”

Maura was making eye contact with her drink. “Blue, this isn’t something you should worry about.”

Blue stared. “But – Mom, these are my friends we’re talking about! My _best friends._ How can you say that I shouldn’t worry about it, especially if it could be my fault? How – how could it be my fault.”

“She said it _wasn’t_ your fault,” Calla snapped impatiently.

“Blue, don’t listen to her,” Maura said, gesturing at Gwenllian. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

Blue crossed her arms and glared at her mother. “I want to know why it was even question,” she said irritably. “I’m not a child. I can handle it. Does it have to do with my energy?”

Calla and Maura exchanged a look. “Blue, it has nothing to do with you at all,” Maura said. Her voice rang with authority, but it was obvious that there was something she wasn’t saying.

“If this is even remotely related to me, I want to know about it,” Blue said stubbornly. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“Blue,” Maura sighed.

Before she could say anything else, Gwenllian resumed her crazed laughter. She began a dancing canter around the room, singing as she went: “Blue, Blue, the phone for you. Lily, lily, a bird is calling.” She dumped the cat atop the book in Blue’s lap. The poor thing hissed angrily and immediately launched himself towards the underside of the couch, scratching Blue as he went. Gwenllian patted Blue’s head roughly and twirled away to steal a drink from one of the onlookers.

“Wait,” Blue protested. “What does that mean?”

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Calla interjected with a curled lip. “When has she ever said anything that made sense?”

“You’re trying to protect me,” Blue observed crossly. “I don’t need it. I am not a child. _What haven’t you told me?_ ”

“Oh, Blue,” Maura sighed again. Blue could see that she was about to start in on a lecture about how mothers always protected their children, or how Blue couldn’t know what she did and didn’t want to know, or something equally frustrating.

“We did a reading,” Calla interrupted. Maura shot her a nasty look, but Calla ignored it. “After Maura talked to your raven boys, we did a reading on them.”

“And?” Blue pressed impatiently. “What’s going on?”

Maura shot another glare at Calla, but she took over the discussion. “We don’t have all the details,” she warned, “but we do know that it’s very complicated.”

“What does that mean?” Blue asked. “You aren’t saying anything. What does that mean?”

“It means,” Calla said, “that this thing has all of you tangled up in it.”

Blue stared at her. “So it’s all of our faults? Is that what you’re saying?”

“It’s no one’s fault,” Maura reassured.

“Well,” Calla said.

“It’s no one’s fault,” Maura repeated firmly. “Whatever happened, none of you wanted it to.”

“That’s not the same thing as it not being anyone’s fault,” Blue pointed out, but no one seemed willing to address that point. Silence, or as close as it got to it in this house, pressed down on the room as Calla studied her nails and Maura studied her drink. Sighing in exasperation, Blue decided to change the direction of her inquiry to what she really wanted to know. “So, how do we fix it?”

“Ah,” Maura said. “Well, that’s why we haven’t said anything.”

Blue felt dread settle into the pit of her stomach. “We can’t fix it?” she asked. Her blood ran cold with disbelief. “There’s nothing we can do?”

Calla rolled her eyes. “There’s nothing _you_ can do,” she clarified.

“This is up to them,” Maura added. “They’re the only ones who can fix this, so they’ll have to figure it out.”

“So… are you saying that we can tell them about their history?” Blue asked hopefully, though nothing Maura or Calla had said really suggested that they meant that. She understood, of course, that she had just been told that it wasn’t her responsibility to fix the problem, but she had never been content with being told there was nothing she could do, and certainly her actions could have some sort of impact on Adam and Ronan. Nothing happened in a vacuum, and drawing the two of them closer together could only increase their chances for finding a solution, right?

Maura and Calla exchanged a look. “Blue,” Maura said carefully, “we really can’t say what would or wouldn’t help them. Telling them anything might only lengthen the time it will take for them to come to a solution. It might be better to just…”

“Stay out of it,” Calla summed up.

“Yes, exactly,” Maura confirmed. “We just don’t know enough to interfere.” Blue looked at her mother petulantly, and Maura sighed. “I know. I know it’s terrible to tell you to do nothing, but we just don’t have any other solutions right now. We’ll keep working on it, but I think it’s incredibly likely that you’ll just have to let this one play out.”

Blue burned with annoyance. “You said ‘might.’ It _might_ be better. You don’t know. Maybe I’ll tell them, and then everything will be okay. No, don’t look at me like that! I am not a child!”

“You’re acting like one,” Calla snapped.

Maura sighed. “We just don’t know, Blue. I _know_ there’s a chance that your interference could make things better, but I don’t want you to have to live with the guilt if it makes things worse.”

“What about the guilt of not helping when I could have?” Blue shot back. No one answered her, because everything that needed to be said had already been voiced. Blue knew that her mother was right – she couldn’t live with making things worse through her actions – but Blue was right, too. She wasn’t sure that she could live with not making them better, either. The worst part was that she had been dealing this same conflict since the very beginning. And that struggle was precisely what made this entire situation so incredibly unbearable.

The phone started ringing, the most present sound in a room full of women who were out of words to speak. Elsewhere in the house, someone picked it up, and then Orla was hollering down the stairs, “Blue! There’s a raven boy on the phone for you!” All eyes in the room went to Gwenllian, but she was quite busy crouching to stare under the couch with a Cheshire smile. Blue could almost picture the cat staring back at her.

Blue sighed heavily and slid the book off her lap as she got up. “Coming,” she called back to Orla. She spent a moment examining the dresser in her path before attempting the same maneuver Gwenllian had used to get into the room. A sharp corner jabbed her in the side and she scraped her arm on the edge. For the sake of Blue’s pride, she chose to believe that Gwenllian had been equally assaulted by the piece of furniture, as opposed to the idea that Gwenllian might just be better at navigating around obstacles. She still glared at her relative, however, and said, “This thing had better be gone by the time I get back.” Then she hurried upstairs to the phone and her judgmental cousin.

The phone/sewing/cat room was empty, however, when Blue got there. She spotted Orla coming from the bathroom with a bottle of nail polish remover and scrambled to pick up the abandoned phone before her cousin could get a chance to comment. “Hello?” she greeted breathlessly.

“Blue?”

“Adam?” That was Adam. Blue couldn’t think of a reason Adam would have called, except – “Is everything okay? Did you remember something?” She shooed Orla away with an irritable hand gesture. Orla made a sour face, but she left the room.

“No,” Adam said. “I mean, yes, everything is fine. Or – mostly fine. Just like it has been, I guess. I haven’t remembered anything, though. I just –”

Hope deflated in Blue’s chest, and though Adam had said everything was okay, dread flooded into the newly empty space. “What’s going on?” she asked.

Adam was quiet for a long moment. “Maybe I shouldn’t have called,” he said hesitantly. He was nervous, so he was second-guessing, Blue thought. She waited for him to gather his courage, because sometimes that was all a person needed: an assurance that the ear they were speaking into would be patient with them. Finally, Adam managed to add, “I’m on break.”

“So, we don’t have a lot of time,” Blue surmised. “That’s fine. We can talk later, if you want. Or tomorrow. Any time.”

Adam’s breath came audibly through the line. “Everyone keeps saying that,” he said. “That I can talk to them any time. I don’t know what I’m supposed to talk about.”

“Whatever you want,” Blue assured him. “We can talk about Ronan, or Cabeswater, or even your next Latin test. Hey, you can teach me how to fix Gansey’s car, if you want. I’m your friend, so I’m here to listen to whatever you want to talk about.”

“I want…” Adam said, but he didn’t finish it. Blue never knew quite how to finish that sentence either. _Want_ was such a big concept, and it seemed impossible to squish such a thing down into words.

Blue sighed. She couldn’t tell him. Want was already such a big thing, and telling him would only make it bigger. It would be cruel, especially if it didn’t help. So, instead, she said, “I know. Me too.”

They were both silent for a long time, each thinking about the enormity of want, that cavernous thing that was never satisfied. Then, Adam said, “Blue?”

“Yeah?” Blue replied quietly.

Adam let out a long breath, another pause before another set of difficult words. He said, “Would you… Can you stay on the phone until my break is over?”

Blue settled back into quiet contentment. “Yeah.”


	17. Chilled Drop By Drop

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ronan looks for answers in his dreams. It doesn't go well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at this! Only one week this time! I feel so accomplished! (But, actually, this probably won't happen again because this took a lot of focus. So, we'll hopefully see another update in 2 weeks, then.)
> 
> Also, though, this is a relatively long chapter. I didn't mean for it to get this long. So many nightmare things...

Ronan knew it was a mistake the second he began to dream. No, that wasn’t true – he’d known it was a mistake before he'd tried and failed to sleep at Monmouth, before he’d repeated the routine at the Barns, before he’d finally managed to drift off while sitting in his car, across the street from a parking lot on the outskirts of Henrietta. He’d known it was a mistake, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself from making it.

The dream was dark – greys and browns and blacks with a periphery of crimson that disappeared when Ronan turned to look at it. It was the perfect set up for a nightmare, which was precisely why this was a mistake. He shouldn’t have attempted an expedition into his own head when all of his doubts and fears were already so close to the surface. It was reckless and careless and _stupid_ , and Ronan didn’t care. He needed answers.

The dream was of Cabeswater because Ronan needed it to be, but it was Cabeswater at its worst. It was Cabeswater that felt like a bad memory just before it happened. It was a feeling of dread, of darkness, of death. Death, always death: death was a promise, a threat, a guarantee.

Ronan spotted movement between the trees. A night horror? He tried to unthink it, but he was desperately afraid. He hadn’t even done anything yet. To have his dream ended with blood so quickly would be just another thing that was so incredibly out of his control. To have his dream ended so quickly would be to say that it was all just hopeless, that he had no chance of finding answers. Ronan wasn’t ready to admit that.

The figure in the trees moved again. Ronan let out breath of relief: it was the Orphan Girl, dark like everything else in the dream, but still a spot of light. She was a shadow, a candle quieted by a heavy shade. She was hiding behind a tree.

“Come out from there,” Ronan hissed. He didn't want to speak too loudly, for fear of getting the attention of an actual monster. Orphan Girl shrunk back further, only a quarter of her face and one of her hands still peeking around the tree. Ronan knew that she wouldn’t leave the safety of the thicket when he was dreaming like this. He might have chosen to take this risk, but that didn’t mean that she had to. “Stay where I can see you,” he amended. “Don’t leave.”

Ronan turned in a slow circle, looking at each of the trees. He dreaded the attention that speaking would bring, but he wasn’t going to get anywhere by standing in silence. He breathed in once, twice, and hoped the trees were listening. Hoped the trees were the only ones listening. Then he said, loudly and with a confidence he did not feel but had long ago learned to fake, “Tell me about Adam.”

The trees’ voices were quiet, and the sound of leaves tickling against each other drowned out most of the words. They were talking to each other, not to Ronan. “Hey!” Ronan yelled, feeling more desperate. He had a limited amount of time here, in a dream like this, and he didn’t have the time to piece together words he couldn’t hear. He repeated, “Tell me about Adam!”

“Adam, Adam,” the trees murmured, not much louder than before. They spoke over and in chorus with one another. “Adam, magician.”

“I know that part!” Ronan told them, feeling frustrated. “Tell me about me and Adam! Tell me what I’ve forgotten!”

The voices dropped in volume immediately, and the wind picked up. The cries and shrieks of night horrors could be heard in the distance. There had to be at least a dozen of them, judging by the noise they were making. Ronan was out of time. He looked up at the trees imploringly, and he whispered, “Please.”

“Greywaren,” the trees replied soothingly. It became a litany, repeated over and over, trees speaking over each other, all in an attempt to calm him. Ronan was acutely aware that it was doing nothing to deter the night horrors. Their calls were close, so close.

Ronan crouched close to the ground, bracing for impact. He scanned the tree line, watching for them, and his eyes snagged on the Orphan Girl, cowering behind one of the larger trees. She met his eyes, and there was a second where Ronan forgot the night horrors were coming. Then Orphan Girl moved her lips with the trees: “Greywaren.” And Ronan –

Ronan awoke with a start. He was in the driver’s seat of his BMW, he was gasping for air as if he’d really faced off against the night horrors, he was alone, and he had nothing more than he’d gone into the dream with.

“Damn it,” Ronan said, because it needed to be said. He slammed his hand against the steering wheel for good measure. “ _Damn_ it!” He clenched both hands around the wheel now, and his knuckles turned white with the strain. He took a couple of breaths, and slid his hands to the top of the wheel before resting his head against them. He closed his eyes in defeat.

“No.” Ronan lifted his head. “No,” he said again, more loudly. “No! I am not going to let you fucking shut me out!” He wasn’t sure who he was yelling at, but he felt better for having said it. He was too anxious to sleep – too angry to sleep without a repeat appearance of the night horrors – but he was going to try anyways. He stared at the dashboard until his breathing evened out, and then he turned his head to the passenger side window.

 _Adam,_ he thought. _I’m doing this because I want know why I’ve forgotten Adam._ He breathed slowly and stared across the street until his eyes closed, and then he kept thinking about his endgame – about Adam – until he fell asleep.

He was in Cabeswater once more. It was a different part of the forest, dark but in a less menacing way – calmer, maybe. Less like a looming storm. But Ronan was remembering the previous dream, and the light bent so that he could catch brief glimpses of the jagged edges of a chasm several feet away, isolating him on an island of the forest. The trees closest to the edge reached out with hungry branches, looming with the threat to cast him over the edge if he got too close. It was an ominous reminder: Ronan might be safe for the moment, but one wrong move could bring him to ruination.

On the opposite side of the chasm, Ronan could just make out the frightened form of the Orphan Girl. She was clinging to a tree trunk as if she worried she would fall without it, though she didn’t seem close enough to the edge to slip. Her eyes met Ronan’s and she shook her head. “It isn’t safe,” she said in Latin, a whisper carried to him by the wind.

But Ronan already knew that it wasn’t safe. He already knew that this was a terrible idea, that he wasn’t likely to get any more information this time than he’d gotten the last. The thing was, though, that the real world didn’t feel much safer. In the real world, Ronan forgot people who had apparently been holding his life together, judging by the fallout. In the real world, Ronan couldn’t understand his own mind. At least here he knew how things would play out, even if that outcome was terrible. At least here the stakes were lower – Ronan could be torn to death a thousand times, but as long as he didn’t bring it back with him, he could go on to die a thousand times more.

“Nothing is safe,” Ronan called over to the Orphan Girl. “Let go of that tree.” He only said it because he was feeling slightly irritated at her caution. She was his dream, so shouldn’t she be on his side? He would think that when he wanted something this much – when it was radiating out from him like heat from a lamp – the rest of the world should be stuck feeling it, too. He didn’t protest, however, when Orphan Girl’s grip only tightened; everyone needed something to hold onto.

Ronan looked imploringly at the trees closest to him – the ones that looked at least somewhat friendly. He told them, “I want to know why I forgot.”

Whispering leaves rustled in the breeze. The trees were conferring once more, and Ronan was losing his patience. “Just tell me!” he shouted. The ground shifted beneath his feet. He was tossed side to side as easily as if he were a pebble being rattled in a box. He tried to brace himself against the soil, but it crumbled away beneath his fingers, and suddenly he was falling.

Ronan thought the dream might end there – it wouldn’t be the first time he’d been sentenced to a ceaseless fall, or to a crushing impact with an unforgiving surface – but instead he landed, bruised but not broken, in another section of the dream forest. He groaned because he needed to convince himself that he was still alive, and then he took in his surroundings. Only a few feet in front of him, there was a wide expanse of stagnant water. On the opposite side of the pool, Orphan Girl crouched, staring into the dark liquid. The trees still loomed oppressively.

Ronan shifted a little – he could still move; that was good – and Orphan Girl looked up at him accusingly. “I don’t want to be here,” she informed him in Latin. For a moment, Ronan didn’t understand. Then it came to him in a rush: earlier, he’d told her to stay where he could see her, and she was doing exactly that. He was immediately and overwhelmingly grateful.

“Nothing here wants you,” Ronan assured her, which was as close to “thank you” as he was going to get. She only whimpered in reply, either because she didn’t believe him, or because they were both exceedingly aware that he hadn’t made mention of his own safety.

The Orphan Girl stared glumly downwards and flicked a few pebbles into the pool. Ronan took that as a suggestion and rolled onto his stomach so that he could inch his way over to the edge of the water. He couldn’t help the feeling of terror trickling slowly through his veins, fueled by the certainty that this was only the calm before the storm. There had to be something awful waiting just to rip him apart. It had never been that easy to escape the horrors of Ronan’s mind.

Ronan stared into the water for a long moment, watching himself watch himself. The water was motionless, the surface unnaturally flat and the depths impenetrable. He looked across at Orphan Girl. “What is the point of this?” he asked irritably, though he didn’t know if she would be able to answer. He looked up at the treetop canopy that had appeared in the place of the gaping hole he had fallen through. “I _said_ I wanted to know what happened! I want to know what I forgot! Fucking talk to me!”

The leafy branches rattled and cracked against each other as the trees went into revolt. Leaves detached themselves from trees and were thrown into the torment of an angry wind. Several of them crashed into Ronan’s face on their way to the ground.There was not a single comprehensible word in the chaotic noise.

Orphan Girl made a small noise, and Ronan looked over at her. She was looking down into the pool, and Ronan followed her gaze. The water was stirring, swallowing up the leaves that landed on it. Dark colors swirled within the pool, blacks and brown-greens and crimsons that crashed and bled into one another. As Ronan watched, the noise above began to quiet, and the nonsensical painting within the pool began to resolve into something meaningful.

It took a minute, but Ronan started to recognize himself in the water. It was unlike any other out-of-body experience he’d ever had, namely because he was already quite firmly in his own body. The Ronan in the pool was walking through Cabeswater in a much calmer time, everything so perfectly normal that Ronan couldn’t place the time of the walk. Pool-Ronan pushed through a grouping of vines, entering a small clearing. Right in the center, sitting on a ground with tarot cards in his hands, was Adam Parrish.

Adam turned, smiled, moved his mouth – this viewing screen apparently didn’t come with sound. Ronan felt something like sick anticipation settle in his stomach. This Ronan and this Adam didn’t have any idea what was coming – what they were going to lose. This Ronan didn’t know that he was going to forget all the smiles Adam had ever smiled at him. He didn’t know how much he was going to miss something that he wouldn’t remember having.

Thunder cracked loudly above, startling Ronan and making him look up. Immediately, a flash of lightning struck the complicated web of tree branches overhead. It was eerily silent, the thunder having had its say before the lightning in this strangely reversed world. Ronan didn’t have time to ponder it, however, because the branches were creaking and groaning unhealthily. It hit the breaking point so quickly that Ronan didn’t have time to make sense of just how much tree matter was coming down on him, and he barely had time to shield his face.

Ronan was buried under a mass of leaves and bark, and in the same instant, awoke in his car once more. He couldn’t move, and he dreaded the thought of what he might have brought back. A tree branch impaled straight through his lung? He couldn’t feel anything enough to be sure, and he couldn’t move to look at anything but the door handle. He just had to wait it out and hope he kept breathing.

It was a long moment before Ronan finally felt his finger twitch, leading to a cascading return of feeling to the rest of his body. He felt sore, but not skewered; he’d brought back some bruises, but it didn’t seem as though he had anything worse. When he could finally move his arms, he found twigs and leaves stuck to his clothes. There were a few rips in his shirt, too. It felt like a warning.

Ronan still wasn’t ready to give up. He hadn’t learned anything; if anything, he only had more questions. He took a couple of minutes to recover from the dream, and to expel little bits of tree through his car window. He didn’t care if it was only an exponentially more stupid decision the third time around; Ronan couldn't stop now.

Once again, Ronan looked out across the street as he attempted to calm his pulse and lull himself back to sleep. He counted in his head in an attempt to constrict his thoughts into something more orderly, more productive. _One, two, three, four._ Across the street, Adam’s hardly-functional car had grown cold waiting in the company of a cluster of other hardly-functional cars. _Five, six, seven._ Inside, Adam was working on whatever one worked on in a trailer factory, taking his escape from the world Ronan was living in. _Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve._ Ronan thought that he might ask Adam about the job some time, just to know something more about a person he was already supposed to know so much about. _Thirteen, fourteen._ It would only be – Ronan lethargically checked the time – another hour before Adam ended his shift. _Fifteen, sixteen…_ He didn’t know why he was even here. He didn’t think he should be here…

Ronan’s eyes fell shut. _Adam,_ he thought, _I want to remember you, Adam._ But wanting wasn’t enough, not without doing something to make it happen. That was why Ronan was doing this. Why he was forcing himself to sleep yet again instead of cutting his losses. He needed to act, or all the wishing and wanting in the world wouldn’t mean a thing.

This time, Ronan found himself standing in the middle of a long, empty road. The majestic trees of Cabeswater were nowhere in sight, and the sparse scattering of saplings surviving in the nothingness alongside the road only made the scene lonelier. It was raining, but it must have only just started, because the pavement still bled heat even as the world was chilled drop by drop. The sky was dark gray, injecting the world with a vast emptiness that struggled to be even half-lit. Ronan was so incredibly alone.

“Why am I here?” he yelled at the sky; there was nothing else yell at. “Tell me how to remember!”

Behind Ronan, a light clicked on. He turned and found himself staring down his own car headlights. The car was far enough back that it could easily accelerate to deadly speeds several times over, which was the worst thought that Ronan could have possibly had in a dream like this. The sound of the engine cut into the world. Ronan felt frozen to the spot, and the car started a slow acceleration in his direction.

“You make bad choices,” Declan said in his ear, but Ronan turned and found Matthew instead, grinning like he hadn’t heard the words of Declan’s absentee disapproval.

“Matthew,” Ronan said firmly, doing the best to hide his terror, “you need to move.” Matthew blinked at him innocently, and Ronan risked a glance at the car. Time seemed to be crawling over his skin, and though the car didn’t pose an immediate threat, it could turn deadly at any moment. Panicked, Ronan said, “I need you to move _now_!”

Ronan felt a tug at his wrist bands, and found Orphan Girl at his side, looking urgent. She didn’t say anything, because they both already knew that Ronan wasn’t safe where he was, either. “Where have you been?” Ronan asked, which was his way of saying that he was glad she was here now.

Orphan Girl pointed at a tree off the side of the road, which was either her saying that she’d been here all along, or her suggesting that they move to said location immediately, rather than standing in the path of a car, no matter how slowly or strangely it was accelerating. Whatever she’d meant, Ronan thought it best to listen to the latter.

“Matthew,” he said, “we need to go.” Matthew didn’t respond, and Ronan tried not to panic. “We need to –” The car revved its engine. It started down the road as happily as it might have with Ronan behind the wheel. It was a horrific thought, and Ronan was almost certain that he would find another version of himself driving the car once it was close enough to run him over. He wasn’t sure how much of the water streaming down his face was from the rain.

Ronan turned to Orphan Girl and said, “Run.” Without waiting to see if she listened, he turned his attention to Matthew. It was too late to coax his brother off the road; now he was going to go for physically pushing him. He shoved as hard as he could. Matthew didn’t budge.

He shoved, and Matthew didn’t budge.

Ronan was putting his entire weight into it, but it was as if Matthew was a dense human statue; he couldn’t be moved. Time was a shiver that ran up Ronan’s spine, so the car hadn’t reached them yet, but it wouldn’t be long. There was only an instant before they would both be crushed. Ronan stepped in front of Matthew.

And then, suddenly, he was on the ground. Someone had knocked him down, out of the way. The BMW stalled loudly and spectacularly. Ronan looked up.

 _Adam._ It was Adam standing over him. He didn’t look impressed by Ronan’s show of protection. That might have been due to the fact that he was literally holding up the sky. He held it in one hand, and with the other he flipped Ronan off. “I’m not here to rescue you,” he said.

Ronan thought that was an incredibly stupid thing to say, considering that that was precisely what Adam had just done. He couldn’t fathom why he would dream of Adam saving him, and yet here Adam was. He couldn’t think about that right now, so instead he said, “Matthew?”

They both looked behind Adam, but Matthew was nowhere to be seen, and neither was the BMW. It wasn’t completely unusual for someone to disappear in the middle of one of Ronan’s dreams, so Ronan just had to swallow his anxiety and take solace in the fact that there was no blood.

He looked at Adam again. Real-life Adam had no more answers than Ronan did, but this was dream-Adam, and Ronan was more than willing to believe that he did. So, he asked, “How do I remember?”

Adam gave him a pitying look; it was not a nice thing to see on him. He shifted the sky from one hand to the other, and then changed his mind and held it up with both instead. “You don’t want to remember,” he said.

“I do!” Ronan insisted. “Tell me how! Tell me why! Tell me – tell me _something_!”

Adam hunched under the weight of the sky. The rain slowed, and then the falling water gradually transitioned into falling stars. One fell onto Ronan’s arm and burned him. Adam watched dispassionately as he tried to pat it off. “You have more answers than you realize,” Adam said finally, giving him the sort of look that teachers had when they said, _Ronan, you aren’t living up to your potential._ He resettled the sky once more.

“I don’t, though,” Ronan complained. “I don’t know what to do – can you please just tell me what to do?”

Adam looked at him for a long time, studying in a clinical sort of way. He looked disappointed or undecided, and it made Ronan feel sick. Finally, Adam seemed to come to some sort of conclusion. The sky had never looked heavier.

Adam said, “For– me.” There was an unbearably loud series of cracks in the middle of the first word, so Ronan could only watch Adam’s mouth move around it as he sunk to his knees. It wasn’t too hard to figure out, though, and it made Ronan angry.

“No!” he shouted. “I don’t want to forget you!” He hadn’t realized, before he’d said it, just how true it was. He’d gathered only a small collection of memories of Adam over the past several days – nothing, really; not compared to what he’d lost – but he couldn’t bear the thought of losing them. He couldn’t bear the thought of losing _Adam._ Not again.

Adam shook his head. “Ronan,” he said, but there wasn’t time for him to say anything else. The weight of the sky was too much for him, and Adam couldn’t hold it up any longer. Ronan saw it coming in torturous slow-motion. Adam’s spine bent beneath the pressure. It only took a second for it to snap, but it was the longest second of Ronan’s life.

It only took a second, and then the sky was coming down, more than happy to crush them both. Ronan didn’t even know if Adam could feel it anymore, if he was even still there. He wanted to ask, but a planetary body was slowly crushing the air out of his lungs and he couldn’t speak. The rings of Saturn became an icy blade that cut an arc across Ronan’s forehead. The most painful by far, though, were the stars and meteors burning into Ronan’s skin with excruciating attention to detail; Ronan didn’t think there was a single cell in his body that wasn’t scorched. He tried to breathe in, but there was no oxygen, and there wouldn’t have been room for it anyways. Ronan was pinned by the weight of the universe, and it was nearly done killing him.

He woke up. He still couldn’t move. Blood dripped past his eyes, and that was so much worse a warning than the last. It was incredibly frustrating to be told again and again that he shouldn’t be seeking answers in his dreams. It felt like Ronan had nowhere else to turn.

But then Ronan became aware of a frantic tapping on his car window. He was still frozen and couldn’t look, but he knew who it was as soon the person said, “Ronan Lynch, I swear to you, I will break this window!”

_Adam._


	18. The Terrible Semi-Silence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ronan is bleeding in his car, and Adam is, understandably, freaking out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After all that, I ended writing the whole chapter this week anyways. So, obviously I _can_ do one week between updates, but I am actually terrified that I'm going to lose all motivation, so I'm just going to promise two weeks again, and maybe I'll do better than that.

Adam Parrish was not the sort of person who broke into cars. For eighteen years now, that had been nothing but a positive, something to pride himself on: maybe he couldn’t buy anything without giving up something else, but at least he wasn’t a criminal. Now, searching the side of the road for a rock weighty enough to smash through the window of Ronan’s BMW, he couldn’t help but wish he’d taken the time to develop a working knowledge of the weaknesses of a car’s locking mechanism; at least then he might’ve had an option other than vandalism.

Honestly, Adam couldn’t even say how he’d gotten here. His life had never looked like this before – at least, not that he could remember. As far as he was concerned, this was a day of firsts: accepting food, asking for help, and now he was planning to commit a crime. Except that Adam had known from the moment he’d taken those unwanted bits of Ronan’s lunch that it wasn’t truly a new routine, and it was only his pride that let him shuffle any other instances of advice into another category. The only true first was this one – Adam was still pretty sure that he’d never broken into a car before. That might have been the only thing he had going for him at the moment.

Adam kicked at a medium-ish rock just off the pavement and wondered if it would be enough to break the window. He didn’t know if there was a particular way he was meant to hold it to avoid injuring himself. Probably the safest thing for him would be to throw the rock, but that could be dangerous to Ronan. Instead, Adam was stuck envisioning his arms shredded into long ribbons of flesh as he moved further off the road to find a better rock. Not for the first time today, he felt utterly helpless.

Truthfully, this entire situation made Adam feel helpless. He didn’t know what to do to fix it, and the sheer magnitude of things he’d forgotten was daunting. He was beginning to see more and more that Ronan was an enormously complex person, and Adam had actually been somewhere close to understanding him before this whole disaster had sent him right back to start. And somehow, the more Adam interacted with Ronan, the more complicated everything got. Ronan was built of opposites – thoughtful at lunch, and then gone without saying goodbye after school – and Adam didn’t know why that bothered him so much. Earlier today, when he’d called Blue, his main concern had been how to even begin to understand his relationship with Ronan, though he hadn’t had the courage to ask; now, he was a little more worried about whether Ronan was even going to survive the night.

Adam spotted a large rock on the ground and scrambled to lift it, only to find that it was half-buried in the dirt, and he didn’t have the time to work it out. “Shit,” he swore softly. Part of him was unbearably angry at Ronan – for showing up here; for having such a recognizable car; for making Adam smile one minute and panic the next. Another part of him alternated between worrying that Ronan’s head injury could be a side effect of whatever strange thing was happening _inside_ of their heads, and feeling guilty for thinking of himself while Ronan was –

How long had it been? Adam wondered if he should go back and check on Ronan, but he was afraid to even look back in the direction of the car. Irrationally, he worried that there would be some sort of external, obvious sign of urgency – or, worse, some indication that he hadn’t been fast enough. Was Ronan even still alive? Adam had no idea how much blood a person could safely lose, but Ronan seemed to have lost an awful lot of it already. Adam couldn't begin to understand it, but there was a feeling like unbelievable pressure constricting his lungs: if Ronan died, especially with Adam looking for a rock ten feet away, it would crush him right down to the soul. He wasn't ready for that.

Finally – _finally_ – Adam spotted a rock that looked like it would do the trick. It was large enough to have some weight behind it, but not so large that it would be impossible to lift, nor was it buried in the dirt. Once again, Adam questioned how his life could have been led to this point, but he didn’t hesitate to hurry over and pry the rock from what little soil held it. It wasn’t particularly light, so he had to painstakingly roll it up his legs in order to return to a standing position, at which point he was able to shift the rock in his arms to give it a little more support. Now he just had to –

A car door slammed. Adam was startled into dropping his rock, and he had to jump back quickly to avoid having his toes crushed. It was too much of a reactionary movement for him to balance the landing, and so Adam landed on his back before he could even comprehend what had happened.

“Fuck, Parrish.”

Adam looked and spotted Ronan jogging over to him. He sat up. “You aren’t dead,” he observed, a little too stunned by the fact of it to really register his emotions over it. He wanted to laugh or cry or something. He wanted to touch Ronan’s face, just to be doubly sure that he was alive.

“What were you thinking?” Ronan demanded, holding out a hand to help him. His other hand was occupied with holding a wad of fast-food napkins to his forehead.

“I don’t think that’s sanitary,” Adam observed dazedly. “You could get an infection.”

Ronan stared at him. “Are you fucking kidding me? You’re out here tripping over rocks, and you’re telling _me_ what’s bad for my health?”

“You – you weren’t moving,” Adam informed him. “Your car was locked, and you were bleeding, and I – I didn’t know what else to do.” It was only just hitting him how utterly terrified he’d been for Ronan. He felt as though he’d been rolled through a meat grinder and was trying to put himself back together. It was only through sheer willpower that he didn’t jump up and hug Ronan right now.

Ronan was still staring, seemingly searching for some indication that Adam had lost his sanity. Finally, he looked away and said, “It happens sometimes. When I bring something back, I get… stuck, I guess. I can’t move. It takes a few minutes to wear off.”

Adam blinked at him. “You – From your dreams? What did you bring back?” Ronan gave him a look, and it hit Adam like an arrow throw the heart. “That cut?” he whispered. “Are you… okay?”

Ronan shrugged in the sort of way that someone would when they were trying to pretend that something monumentally important was actually inconsequential. “I’ve had worse,” he said. It wasn’t something Adam could imagine. He had seen more than his fair share of injuries, but he’d never been locked in his own body at the same time. He didn’t think that he could come up with anything more awful.

“Are you going to get your ass off the ground, or what?” Ronan snapped impatiently. His tone was volatile, and some version of Adam interpreted it as concern. _Cheating,_ that version of Adam hissed. This version of Adam couldn’t fathom how Ronan could possibly be worried about Adam when he was the one bleeding.

Adam took the hand Ronan was still offering and hauled himself to his feet with a groan. “You could have died in your car,” he said. It had to come out; his treacherous mind wouldn’t stop thinking it.

Ronan scoffed. “Not from this.” There was something about the way he said it that turned what he wasn’t saying into a heavy, obvious presence. The terrible semi-silence of the evening was filled with anxious, imagined scenarios of Ronan waking up on the verge of death. Ronan, waking up covered in blood. Ronan, waking up with broken bones. At least, Adam _hoped_ those were imagined scenarios; the alternative – that these were memories he was being given back – was too terrible to consider. So, of course, Adam considered it.

“How bad?” he asked. He wasn’t brave enough to ask louder than a whisper.

“The cut?” Ronan said. He didn’t understand what Adam was asking. “It’s nothing, really. Look – I don’t think it’s even bleeding anymore.” He removed the napkins from his forehead, still smudged with blood, but it was too dark for Adam to see any details.

Without thinking, Adam reached out for Ronan’s forehead. He managed to stop himself only an inch away, his subconscious screaming, _Your hands are covered in dirt!_ He lowered his hand and said, “You need to get some disinfectant. And – I don’t know. I need to see it somewhere brighter. It might need stitches.” He didn’t ask again about the severity of Ronan’s past injuries; he didn’t think he wanted to know, after all. Knowing about this one was more than enough.

“Parrish,” Ronan said calmly. He rested a hand on Adam’s shoulder, and Adam flinched – it was hard not to be drawn back into darker memories at a time like this. Ronan removed his hand immediately, staring at it like it had betrayed him. Adam closed his eyes and told himself that he wasn’t allowed to feel guilty. He didn’t think it was working.

“Parrish,” Ronan tried again, more gently than before. He didn’t touch Adam this time, but there was something about his tone that said he desperately wanted to. Adam imagined that it was the only way Ronan knew how to show compassion. Again, harder but somehow softer: “Parrish.”

Adam opened his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said, but Ronan shook his head.

“Look, Parrish,” he said, “it’s a head wound. They bleed a lot, okay? It’ll be fine. I left most of it in the dream.”

This, too, was something Adam didn’t know how to react to. It was a simple enough statement, but there was so much in it. Ronan hadn’t even questioned or commented on Adam’s reaction, and that meant more than Adam could ever say. He wondered, too, if this was Ronan’s own version of those instincts that Adam kept finding as leftovers from another life. He wondered if Ronan thought of it as cheating, too, and he was a little surprised to note that he didn’t really mind the head start Ronan had on knowing him. He wondered if he should tell him that.

But, really, that line of thought was just an undercurrent in Adam’s mind. No – it was more like a drowning creature, bobbing its head above water every now and then, struggling to survive the torrent of Adam’s thoughts. And this torrent, of course, consisted of two battling tides: one, what were the implications of Ronan’s knowledge of head wounds? And two – just how much worse could this have been in the dream?

“Okay, look, fine, we’ll go somewhere with light,” Ronan said, and the defensiveness in his voice made Adam realize that he was staring, and that perhaps _he_ was the drowning creature in his own thoughts. Ronan added, “Are you hungry?” Adam dragged himself to shore.

“I don’t need you to buy me food,” he said too quickly, before he could realize that Ronan hadn’t even offered yet. Still, they both knew that Adam didn’t have the flexibility of income to support food on a whim. He didn’t think his pride could take another hit today.

Ronan crossed his arms. “You’ve faced a traumatic experience,” he argued. “You need to eat something.”

Adam scowled. “I don’t _need_ anything,” he protested. “ _You_ need to get some sort of Band-Aid or something, but I don’t need anything.”

Ronan glared right back at him, more than prepared to meet Adam’s stubbornness with his own. It was only a moment, however, before Ronan said, “If I let you drag me to the drug store, will you let me buy you a sandwich?”

Adam blinked at him, a little blindsided by the unexpected offer. He didn’t know how to decline it, and he was pretty sure he didn’t want to accept – no, he _couldn’t_ accept – a deal where both ends were for his benefit. A horribly worried part of him, though, wanted to agree to anything to make sure that Ronan was okay. He honestly wasn’t sure whether or not to be glad that the prideful part was winning.

“Let me buy you a sandwich,” Ronan threatened, “or I will rub dirt and all over this damn cut.”

Adam was appalled. “Don’t you even _care_ that you could get an infection?”

“No,” Ronan retorted, “I care that you need a fucking sandwich and won’t let me buy you one.” This struck Adam as remarkably cavalier, and unbearably stupid. Ronan Lynch was a person who lived and breathed magic; who dreamt of things that most wouldn’t even think to imagine, and then brought those things back to the real world with him. It hardly seemed possible that he could die at all, but if he did, Adam thought it should be at the hands of some supernatural being that he took down with him, not some bacteria living in the Henrietta soil.

Of course, life hardly ever worked out the way anyone expected it to, and Niall Lynch, another dreamer, had died at the end of a tire iron. And though Adam had an incredibly clear picture of the world Ronan came from, which certainly curled around a Ronan-shaped hole in his memory, he couldn’t even begin to fit the person before him into that empty space, nor could he fit that empty space into Ronan. What it sounded like Ronan was saying was that he would risk death or discomfort for Adam to have a decent meal, and Adam had never heard anything so utterly unbelievable. He told Ronan, “You are the worst person I’ve ever met,” but he didn’t think either of them believed that he meant it.

Ronan smirked. “I know you’ve forgotten everything about me, but damn – I would have thought you’d at least remember that!” He gestured dramatically towards the car and began leading the way.

“Oh, we’re making jokes about this now?” Adam yelled after him. “Fine, then. I’m not surprised you don’t remember me – you can’t even remember basic medical guidelines. You know, like how you’re supposed to _clean_ a wound, not dirty it.”

Ronan laughed loudly enough that the sound crawled into every bit of space between them. He turned so that he was walking backwards, looking as Adam as he called back, “You forget how walk, too, Parrish? Car’s this way.” Then he tripped over a rock.

It took Adam a few seconds to process it. One moment, Ronan was smirking and taunting and acting like he was the most important thing around – which he was, considering they were in the middle of nowhere – and the next, he was flat on his back, legs sprawled over and around the large rock Adam had failed to extract earlier.

Ronan groaned and shifted his weight, and Adam realized that he’d stopped breathing for a second when Ronan had hit the ground. He pulled in air, forcing it past the constriction in his chest. He told himself it was laughable, really – Ronan Lynch, felled by nature. He started picking his way over, and he forced himself to say, “Oh, _I’m_ the one who’s forgotten how to walk.”

Ronan laughed, maybe because he found his own suffering funny, which would explain an awful lot, or possibly because he could tell that Adam was badly shaken. It wasn’t such a stretch, after all, to think that Ronan might be able to interpret Adam’s body language in a way that most people couldn’t; considering all the hints that Adam’s own subconscious had gifted him, it seemed almost guaranteed that Ronan would get the same cursed courtesy. Once again, Adam was embarrassingly grateful for it.

“Fuck you, man,” Ronan said easily. “Help me up.”

Adam rolled his eyes. “You can fall on your own, but you can’t get up on your own, Lynch?” he taunted, even as he let Ronan use his arm to tug himself off the ground.

Ronan shook his head, staring down at the rock in disappointment. “I never even saw the thing coming,” he muttered.

Adam smirked. “That’s why most people walk _forwards_ , dumbass.”

Ronan made a face. “I should have just left you here,” he grumbled. Still, he gripped Adam’s shoulder and shoved him forward. “Get the fuck in the car. If I never see another rock again, it will be too fucking soon.”

“So dramatic,” Adam muttered as Ronan stomped ahead of him. Without thinking, he reached out to flick a bit of dirt from the back of Ronan’s head. Immediately, Ronan whirled, looking more startled than angry, but before he could say anything about it, Adam asked, “You didn’t give yourself any more injuries there, did you?”

Ronan studied him for a minute before responding, derisively, “I wouldn’t know. I’ve been injured too many times tonight to keep track.”

If that was meant to be a joke, Adam didn’t find it funny. “What else?” he demanded. “What – what gave you that cut?”

Ronan shrugged nonchalantly as he slid into the driver’s side of the BMW. “Saturn,” he said simply, and then he shut the car door.

For too long, Adam just stared at Ronan through the window. For a tilting second, time seemed to fold on itself, and Adam was back to the moment he’d come across the street and found Ronan just like this: motionless and bloodstained in his car. It was a different angle than before, but Adam felt nearly certain that if he tried the door, it wouldn’t open. Then Ronan tilted his head to meet Adam’s eyes. He made an impatient gesture for Adam to get in the car. Time unfolded, and reality came rushing back so quickly that whatever had been there before it seemed not to have the time to let go of some piece of Adam before it vanished.

Adam went around to the other side of the car. When he tugged the handle, the door opened, and he got in. It felt strange to be sitting inside of a car that he had been ready to break into. He touched his hand to the window that he hadn’t smashed, and he didn’t look at Ronan; he couldn’t. “Do you mean to tell me that you dreamt of being run over by a car?”

Ronan laughed, and Adam didn’t understand how he could. “Actually,” he said, “I almost did. But I was talking about the planet.”

Now Adam did look at him. There was something so unbearably, overly present about Ronan in this car. He was meant for a reality greater than this – he _was_ a reality greater than this. “You’re telling me that that enormous planet gave you that little cut,” Adam said. He was unbelieving, but only because he couldn’t imagine experiencing such a thing himself; he had no doubts that Ronan could.

“I’m not explaining fucking dream logic to you, Parrish,” Ronan grumbled.

Adam was still staring. He didn’t know what he was looking for – something concealed within the sharp, defensive lines of Ronan’s shoulders, maybe. He knew he wasn’t going to find any answers hidden in the particularities of Ronan’s shape, but he couldn’t stop his search. It was strange, how utterly familiar those lines were; how it felt like the first time he’d really seen any of it. For a half-second, he thought that he understood Ronan better than he understood even himself. And then it was gone, and he felt desperate to find it again.

Ronan turned slowly from the steering wheel to Adam, obviously giving him an out – a few seconds to decide to be looking at anything else. Adam didn’t take it, and Ronan found his eyes as easily as if he’d done it a thousand times before. “If you have the time,” Ronan said quietly, “I have first aid and food and shit out at the Barns.”

The thing was, Adam didn’t have the time. He should have been back at his apartment by now, studying Latin and reading the English assignment. The thing was, he’d known that he was sacrificing study time the second he’d made the decision to cross the street to Ronan’s car. He didn’t know what that meant – what anything about today meant – but he did know that less than an hour ago, he’d been terrified out of his mind that Ronan was going to die before Adam could remember him or learn him anew. He knew that he wasn’t ready to be alone right now. He said, “The drug store is probably closed by now, anyways.”

Ronan smiled.


	19. Coated in Anticipation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam and Ronan head out to the Barns and manage to do a little bit of talking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, this is a little bit late. Yes, I am going to try to do better for next time. Same routine: I loosely guarantee 2 weeks, but we can certainly hope that I'll be more productive and get the next chapter done sooner.

Even if he lived a million years, Ronan would never grow tired of steering through the roads to the Barns. There was something so comforting and simple about this drive: it was something he could count on. No matter what, Ronan could always be certain that he would make this drive again. It was only at the terrible points of his life that that certainty went away, and just the remembrance of it made Ronan feel like he couldn’t stand anything. It made him feel like he needed answers more desperately than ever.

“Do you think we’ll forget anything else?” he asked quietly. It was something he couldn’t help thinking of, constantly. He’d forgotten Adam, and he didn’t know if he would forget him again. Or maybe he’d lose something else – Matthew or Gansey or even this: the beautiful, anticipatory drive to the Barns.

From the corner of his eye, Ronan saw Adam turn his head against the headrest. He looked tired, but his gaze still felt intense and focused, or maybe that was just Ronan’s imagination. “We’re always forgetting things,” Adam sighed. “It’s human nature. Can you remember what you ate for dinner a month ago? I can’t.”

If this had been a more light-hearted conversation, Ronan might have smiled at that. Though he knew very little, Ronan could say with certainty that this was Adam: logical and frustrating. He wanted to think that Adam was just trying to be difficult, but actually his motives were unclear. Maybe he just didn’t want to talk about it, or maybe he just didn’t want to talk about it like this. Ronan tried to make the conversation more casual. “Shut up, fuck-head,” he grumbled. “You know what I mean.”

Adam sighed again. “You mean will we forget anything important.” 

“Anything _else_ ,” Ronan corrected, so automatic that he didn’t think to raise his voice.

“What?” Adam said. Maybe he hadn’t heard, or maybe he didn’t believe that Ronan had said what he had. Ronan wouldn’t have trusted it, either, if it had been Adam implying that Ronan, even without any memories to back it up, mattered to him. It suddenly felt unbearably important that Adam hear it.

“You’re important, Adam,” Ronan emphasized. “I know it. Even if I forget you again and again, I will always know it. You’ve noticed, haven’t you? Nothing can take you away completely.”

The vents blew out silent, shivering breath, and Ronan struggled to keep his eyes on the road ahead. He couldn’t decide if it would be worse to have Adam disagree, or to have him say nothing at all. Time was coated in anticipation and stretched out in the way that it could be when a person realized they’d just said something they couldn’t take back. Ronan imagined he could hear Adam’s watch ticking, bogged down by the same heavy time. Finally, Adam said, almost too quietly, “I’ve noticed.”

Ronan let out a breath, and bit of tension escaped with it. It had been a bold gamble, he recognized, to assume that Adam was struggling with the same leftovers that he was. Well, maybe not the same, but there was something there, at least – something underlying, and perhaps somewhat ethereal and ungraspable, but it was there. If it was there now, maybe Ronan could trust that it would be there always. He wasn’t quite sure that he could believe in permanence, after all that he’d lost, but he still wanted to.

“I want more,” Adam confessed. He made it sound like it was a terrible thing to admit, like it was the end of the world to want such a thing. Sometimes, Ronan thought, wanting _could_ be the end of the world, but he hoped that wasn’t the case this time.

“I don’t know how to remember,” he said. This, too, sounded like a terrible thing to admit, though it was something that they both already knew. Ronan pulled into the long driveway of the Barn, and the revolt of gravel popping under the tires sounded like coming home. Life was simultaneously made simpler and more complex, and even though this place wasn’t entirely enough to build a life around, Ronan didn’t know how he could stand to be anywhere else.

In the passenger seat, Adam made a small noise of contentment, almost like he was getting some of the same comfort Ronan was. When he spoke, his voice was very quiet and very careful, like he didn’t want to disturb the place or Ronan’s feelings about it. He said, “I think, for now, we just have to make this into something more on our own.”

Ronan had parked the car, but he kept his eyes ahead with as much concentration as if he was still driving. More, even. He was afraid, almost, to look at Adam. Hope was caged in Ronan’s chest, and he wasn’t ready for the sincerity in Adam’s gaze to set it free.

“Ronan,” Adam said softly. “Do you want to go inside?”

The tips of Adam’s fingers brushed against Ronan’s arm, and Ronan closed his eyes. “I don’t know,” he mumbled. Maybe he wanted to go inside, or maybe he wasn’t quite ready for the flood of comfort that would come with it. Maybe that was exactly how he felt about remembering Adam, except that those feelings were magnified a hundredfold. It was a desire so intense that it felt like it was crushing him; it was wanting something so badly that the thought of getting it was absolutely terrifying. That was what it was to be sitting next to Adam in this driveway, the embodiment of so many things that Ronan couldn’t have.

Adam sighed. “It seems unfair,” he murmured. His fingers still hovered just above Ronan’s arm, close enough to be almost-felt. It was calming, in a way, and unbearable in another.

“A lot of this is unfair,” Ronan agreed. He opened his eyes just so that he could look at Adam’s hand. Without his conscious decision, Ronan’s free hand drifted over to pause just above Adam’s. For a brief moment, neither of them moved, the space between their hands almost, but not quite, negligible. Then, almost recklessly, Ronan gently pressed Adam’s hand into his arm.

Adam let out a long, slow breath. “I don’t mean,” he started, but then seemed to think better of it. “It doesn’t seem fair for me to know so much that you haven’t told me.”

Ronan looked up, searching out Adam’s eyes. Adam, however, was studying the dark outline of the house, as if something so intimately familiar to Ronan could unlock some sort of secret about him to Adam. Ronan wasn’t sure whether or not it was irrational to wonder whether Adam would be disappointed by what he might find. He swallowed down the bitter taste of anxiety and asked, “Like what?”

Adam turned back to Ronan, a guilty or pleading look on his face, and immediately, Ronan wanted to wipe it away. Very quietly, Adam said, “You haven’t told me a thing about this place.”

It took Ronan a minute to understand that he really ought to have explained the Barns to Adam before now, and then it took him a minute longer to realize that Adam was saying that he didn’t need to. Ronan felt choked by something significant. “How much?” he asked, halfway to a whisper.

Adam raised his shoulders, but then relaxed them in a motion far too stilted and slow to complete the shrug, as if he had decided partway through that he didn’t want to start this discussion with so casual a gesture. Clearly stalling, Adam picked at a loose thread on the pocket of his worn jeans. Very slowly, he slid his left hand out from under Ronan’s. “Can we go inside? Your forehead…”

He looked guilty to be asking it, but here was finally something Ronan could do. Just about nothing made sense at the moment, especially now that Adam had taken back his hand, but Ronan thought that he could handle bandages a little better than the charged atmosphere in the BMW. He didn’t say anything, but he got out of the car and jogged around to open Adam’s door.

There was a long moment where neither of them moved; where Adam looked up at Ronan, and time turned into a paralytic slowly enough to allow for Ronan’s fingers to tighten on the edge of the door. Then Adam swung his legs out, and his hand almost landed on top of Ronan’s, until Ronan moved at the last second. The tips of Adam’s fingers still managed to skim over Ronan’s knuckles.

Adam pulled himself out of the car, and suddenly there was nothing more than a car door and a little bit of air between them. Ronan could hear someone breathing, and he wasn’t entirely sure that it was himself. “Okay,” he said, more for himself than for Adam. Maybe for no reason at all, because he couldn’t seem to come up with a reason that he’d needed to say it. Necessarily abandoning the thought, he shook off the desire to stay, and instead headed for the front door. It was only a second before he heard Adam close the car door and follow him.

“You should sit down,” Adam said once they were inside. His voice was a whisper, like there was some sort of magic in the air that he didn’t want to scare away. Maybe he thought that the magic was proximity – Adam was right at Ronan’s back, his fingers again hovering just over Ronan’s skin – but Ronan thought of proximity as more of a drug than a magic: every time Adam gave him a sample, Ronan only wanted more.

A breath in, and Ronan tore himself away from temptation. He dropped onto the couch with the sort of reckless abandon that his mother used to tell him would break the furniture. “Now what?” he asked. He had to force his voice into something that felt too loud, but it made the room feel a whole lot less occupied.

Adam found the light switch without any hassle, filling the space with a warm glow and the feeling of an unwhispered secret. “Stay here,” Adam instructed. “I’m going to get some stuff from the medicine cabinet.” He left the room before Ronan could think to ask whether he knew where that was, leaving behind a sick certainty that he’d been here many times before. Ronan probably should have realized that before now, but there were certain things he didn’t want to admit to himself. It seemed so strange to think about these parallel lives they’d lived, all these memories that had Adam-shaped blind spots. Ronan wanted to live again every moment he’d spent with Adam. He wanted to _remember._

Ronan couldn’t get out of his own head, so he got off the couch instead. In the kitchen, he started an investigation of the cabinets, searching out inspiration or memory. He was entirely aware that he was faced with two problems at the moment: the first was that he wanted to give Adam the perfect snack, and the second was that he had no clue what that was. He was sort of hoping that he’d see something and muscle memory would just take over, but he also thought that he might be overthinking too much for that to work.

“Ronan?” Adam called from the other room. Ronan didn’t bother to respond, but he generously slammed the next cabinet he closed, and Adam soon came into the room. “I told you to stay put,” he complained. He didn’t look happy.

Ronan put some effort into suppressing the grin threatening to take over his face. “What do you want to eat?” he asked instead. “Sandwich? Toast? Pasta? Hell, we could make a fucking cake if you wanted.” He didn’t need to keep searching for hints now that Adam was here, but he banged a few more cabinets for the fun of it.

Adam dropped his gathered supplies on the counter and crossed his arms. “I’m not eating anything until you let me clean that cut.”

Ronan paused and turned to Adam, eyebrow raised even though the sensation it created for his forehead was a little uncomfortable. “ _You’re_ cleaning it?”

Adam went a little red. “Sure,” he said, though he sounded anything but. “I mean – it’s on your face, Lynch. It’ll be a little hard to take care of even if you do it in front of a mirror.” Ronan continued to present a skeptical front. “Fine!” Adam caved. “Do it yourself, if you want. Either way, it’s getting done before food.”

“But you _are_ having food,” Ronan verified as he wet a paper towel at the sink. He squeezed out the excess water and carefully removed dried blood from his forehead. There was more than he’d expected, and he began to understand why Adam had been so concerned.

Adam made a noise of frustration. “You’re so stubborn,” he grumbled. “Are you really not going to do that with a mirror?”

Ronan shrugged. “Don’t need to,” he replied, which was true. He knew precisely where the cut was, from memory and from feel. He dropped his paper towel into the trash and headed for the medical supplies.

With a long-suffering sigh, Adam shook his head and moved past him to the sink. “You missed some, genius,” he muttered as he wet a new paper towel. Before Ronan could react, Adam was dabbing the paper towel at the side of his temple. It was familiar in a way that was terrible, because Ronan didn’t want to think that he’d ever forced Adam through this before, and because it was yet another thing that couldn’t be done without a reminder that they’d lost so much of what they’d done before. He wasn’t sure that, if this had felt like a genuine first time, he would have allowed Adam to do it. He was a little afraid that he might have.

Adam finished with the paper towel, and reached for the alcohol wipes, but Ronan swatted his hand away. “Christ, Parrish,” he protested, “I’m not a fucking child.”

Adam looked doubtful. “Are you saying that because you don’t want to use the alcohol pads, or because you don’t want _me_ to do it?” Ronan refused to answer, partly because he wasn’t sure if only the former was true, or if both statements were. Adam tore open an alcohol wipe before Ronan could stop him, staring defiantly as if this action of tearing open the package meant that the product _had_ to be used. “You had your skin sliced open by a magical dream planet,” he said. “You’re using the alcohol.”

Ronan made a face. “I’m not a child,” he reiterated, but he crossed his arms and leaned back, allowing Adam access to his face.

After a moment’s hesitation, Adam started cleaning the cut with the alcohol wipe. Ronan hissed, recoiling from the sting of it. “Baby,” Adam taunted. He grabbed onto the back of Ronan’s head. “Hey, hold still!”

“What do you want to eat?” Ronan asked, ignoring Adam’s request.

“Oh my god, why do you have to make everything so difficult?” Adam complained as he struggled to keep a grip on Ronan’s head and clean his cut at the same time. “This is going to end up in your eye!”

“It’d probably hurt less,” Ronan muttered, though he knew that wasn’t true. Truthfully, the alcohol on the cut wasn’t so unbearable, either. What would really hurt would be sitting perfectly still as Adam did his work; the inside of Ronan’s head could do far more damage than Adam and an alcohol pad.

“Wimp,” Adam accused. He discarded the alcohol wipe on top of the paper towel. “Do you want me to do the bandage, too?”

Ronan snagged it before Adam had a chance. “I can put a fucking Band-Aid on myself, Parrish,” he said sharply. “Tell me what you want to eat.”

Adam looked around the kitchen. He didn’t seem to be taking it in as a person would upon a first visit. Instead, his was a soft gaze – the way that you look at something when it looks exactly as you knew it would. It was the same way that Ronan looked at the kitchen: like its shape had become a part of him. Ronan felt like he’d been left out of a joke being told right in front of him.

Very quietly, Adam sighed. He took the trash from the counter and threw it out, and then he looked right at Ronan. His hand was clenched in the material of his jeans as he worked his jaw. Ronan wanted to tell him that whatever he was going to say, he didn’t have to, but before he got the chance, Adam said two words that stopped him cold: “Robert Parrish.”

Immediately, the name set off a volatile path of synapses in Ronan’s head. He saw flashes – things that he hadn’t forgotten, but that he hadn’t made the connection on. Robert Parrish, yelling into the trailer park night. Robert Parrish, blood on his knuckles and his face. Robert Parrish, in a courtroom. Robert Parrish had abused his son – had deafened him in one ear. And Adam – Ronan didn’t want to believe it. He didn’t want this to be what Adam came from; Adam deserved better than what Ronan had gotten in life, not worse.

When he spoke, Ronan didn’t really know what to say, so he half-heartedly joked, “I don’t think that bastard would taste very good.”

Adam stared for a minute before he remembered Ronan’s previous request, and then he started laughing. “Oh, fuck, Ronan,” he said between breaths. “Shit.”

Ronan tried for a grin, but he couldn’t seem to make it happen. “Why?” he said instead. “Why did you – why would you tell me that? I didn’t –” He wanted to say that he hadn’t wanted to know, but that seemed horribly hypocritical, considering just how much he’d been yearning to remember anything at all about who Adam was. He’d wanted to know; he just hadn’t realized quite how much it would hurt to find out.

Adam shrugged, tracing his finger along the edge of the counter so that he didn’t have to look at Ronan. “I figured you should know about my father,” he said, “since I – I know about yours.”

If hearing the name of Adam’s father had been surprising, then hearing mention of his own was absolutely earth-shattering. “Oh,” Ronan said. “Oh. How did you – I mean, how long? Why didn’t you say anything before?”

“It’s been a couple of days,” Adam confessed. “I didn’t know how to – I’m so sorry, Ronan.”

Ronan could feel a pained expression painted onto his face, and he shook his head. Even with the wound less-than-fresh, he still didn’t know what to do with sympathetic apologies. He especially didn’t know what to do with them in the wake of realizing that the person giving them deserved some just as much. It felt like a sick twist of cruelty that they were even having this conversation, but they were, and Ronan spoke with his heart in his throat. “Adam, your ear.”

Adam reached up to touch it. “It doesn’t hurt,” he offered, though from his tone, he clearly knew that neither of them could take comfort in that. Neither of them quite knew how to follow that up, either, and so the room descended into silence for the space of a minute. Then Adam tried a new tactic. He said, “I’ve figured out good things about you, too.”

“Like what?” Ronan challenged. His words were cruel arrows, dipped in a disbelieving toxin. Sometimes, Ronan thought that what he was best at was pushing people away.

Adam didn’t take the bait. “You like Latin,” he said. “You’re the best student in the class.”

Ronan blinked as the words triggered another conclusion in his mind. “You’re the best student in the school,” he replied. “Do you think I give a shit about that, Parrish? Come on, what else do you have?”

Adam regarded him carefully for a moment. “You care,” he said finally, with an emphasis that let Ronan know that he wasn’t talking about school. “You want people to think that you don’t, and so you pretend that you aren’t being nice. Like with lunch. You didn’t have to do that, but you’ve been doing it so often that you just kept doing it automatically. You care, Ronan.” He paused. “I don’t – I don’t know if I’m remembering that, or just learning it again.”

“What makes you think that was something you thought before?” Ronan asked. He wasn’t sure if that counted as confirmation, but he did know that he didn’t want to admit to how comforted he was by this evidence that Adam didn’t think him a terrible person.

The look on Adam’s face suggested that the answer was rather obvious. “You’re hardly subtle,” he said. “You can shout ‘anarchy’ all you want; I’m not buying it. You just want to carve out your space in the world and make sure everyone in it is good.”

“Maybe that’s _your_ dream,” Ronan persisted stubbornly. “I want the Barns, and a fast car, and long stretch of road to race it on.” And it was the truth, but it wasn’t all of the truth. He could pretend all he wanted, but Ronan had to admit at least to himself that he cared about quite a few people in this world, and it felt like it wouldn’t be much longer that he could deny that Adam Parrish might be one of them.

Adam wasn’t fooled. He said, “You already have all of that.” He took a step closer, bringing them once again into a space that felt too small for two people, and yet felt comfortable like falling into a seat after a long time standing. Adam poked his finger into Ronan’s chest. “You want more.”

 _No,_ Ronan wanted to say. _Not much,_ he wanted to qualify. _Just this,_ he wanted to confess. He was staring at Adam’s finger, pressing through his shirt to his heart. It was enough; it wasn’t enough; it was more than he should have gotten. “You don’t know me,” he said, quietly enough that it should have been a whisper, but somehow wasn’t.

Adam shook his head. “I don’t,” he agreed. “Not completely. But I’m learning.” He took his hand from Ronan’s heart and used it to grip his shoulder instead. “You’re learning, too.”

Ronan breathed in a breath that was loud enough to fill the silence before he could speak, and then he breathed it out. He couldn’t raise his voice much above a whisper, but he asked, “Are you ever afraid of what you’ll find out?” Unspoken was the qualification: _about me, about yourself._ Ronan mostly wasn’t afraid of what he could learn about Adam, but he was terrified about what that knowledge might mean for how he defined himself.

Adam’s hand slipped from Ronan’s shoulder, and he took a single step back, replacing physical concentration with visual. “Of course I’m afraid,” he said simply. “But not enough to walk away from you.”

For a moment, there was nothing: an expanse of the sort of silence that comes when one person has said more than the other was ready to hear. Then, very carefully, Ronan said, “Okay.” He didn’t have any other words, though he wanted to. Probably, this was the part where he reassured Adam that he wasn’t going to run away from this, either, but the promise was stuck in his throat. He was far too aware that his newly-reborn friendship with Adam could be destroyed through either course of action: remember and be broken, or forget and be broken. Was it possible to be petrified of losing someone you’d already lost?

“Okay,” Adam echoed, but not in a vacuous sort of way. He seemed to be accepting Ronan’s words – he took Ronan’s fear with his own, and he didn’t let it scare him away.

“So, here’s what we’re going to do,” Adam continued. “We’re going to eat something from this kitchen, and we’re going to leave this alone for tonight. No more questions; no more hints. We’re going to go back to Henrietta, and we’re going to sleep, and study, and we’re going to process this. And then we’ll talk about it tomorrow. Does that sound good to you?”

Ronan didn’t know if Adam was offering a favor, or asking for one, but he was a little relieved either way. He didn’t know what else to do with this conversation tonight, and he had almost forgotten that he’d intended to force food on Adam. Still, the sooner they could solve this problem, the better. “We talk about it at lunch,” he countered.

Adam grinned; his mouth was magnetic and Ronan’s eyes were iron filings. “Perfect.”


	20. A Battlefield of Words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blue talks to some psychics and some raven boys before school.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, this is so late! My apologies, readers! I probably have zero credibility when it comes to update promises by now, but... I'm going to try to be quicker about the next one!
> 
> (Also, moment of silence: this fic is now officially one year old. Not a great rate of productivity...)

Blue was forced out of sleep on Wednesday morning when someone’s cat jumped up onto her chest and started kneading her with its claws. This, unfortunately, was not an unusual occurrence. She tried to keep her door closed to prevent it, but sometimes the cats or other creatures of the house (particularly, small children) still managed to gain entry in the hours before Blue’s alarm. Today, however, a glance at the mostly-accurate wall clock, which she’d put together for a science fair, suggested that the alarm should have already gone off; a glance at the corded alarm clock suggested that it had lost power at some point in the night.

Blue scrambled off the bed, dislodging the cat as she went. It growled and darted around her legs on its way out the door, but Blue was already busy scrambling to put together an outfit with the appropriate level of coolness. She quickly settled on a marriage of leggings and a thrift store skirt, with a tank top underneath a shredded shirt on top. Then she shoved her way into the bathroom and swiped her toothbrush over her teeth before sprinting down the stairs two at a time in pursuit of some breakfast and a pair of boots.

In the kitchen, Blue found her mother and Calla, studying a deck of tarot cards as its owner watched fretfully. Previously, Blue had assumed that the power had gone out in one of the ley line surges, which took away her higher ground in complaining. Now, however, she saw the remains of candles melted into the kitchen table, which, in addition to making the house look even _more_ like a psychic’s den, hinted that the power may have been lost in pursuit of some sort of ritual. Blue seized the possibility and stomped loudly towards the fridge. “Why did no one wake me up?” she complained irritably in the direction of her mother.

Calla unceremoniously shushed her, but Maura said, without breaking concentration, “We’re a bit busy here, Blue.”

“Busy with what?” Blue asked suspiciously. She snagged a yogurt from the top shelf of the fridge and wandered over to grab a spoon and investigate. “What are you up to?”

Again without looking up, Maura replied, “We’re trying to determine whether or not Al’s deck is cursed.”

“Why?” Blue asked, popping a spoonful of yogurt into her mouth. She glanced past her mother to Al, who’d earned the nickname by merit of the long, unpronounceable string of letters that followed it. Al was an anxious psychic, and Blue didn’t think she’d ever seen her use the cards; if the deck was in fact cursed, Blue thought that it might have done it to itself out of spite.

Al was hovering over Maura’s shoulder, fingers fluttering at the edge of the counter, and she didn’t let herself be distracted by Blue’s question. Calla, however, shot Blue a haughty look. “Don’t you think it would be best not to use cursed tarot cards?” she replied snappily.

Blue gave her the same look right back. “Why do you think they’re cursed?” she clarified. The only answer she got was a dismissive gesture from Calla, so she decided to ask another question: “Does this have anything to do with what’s going on with Ronan and Adam?”

Calla rolled her eyes. “Not everything is about you.”

“But speaking of…” Al piped up. Blue looked at her sharply, but Al only gestured wordlessly past her.

Before Blue could even turn, someone was tugging at her sleeve. Lucille, one of the many children of the house, stood at her hip, shyly offering up the phone. Blue took it from her, and Lucille retreated a few steps; Blue liked to think that she was dazzled by her coolness. “Thank you,” she offered – dazzling coolness was not maintained with bad manners – and Lucille grinned before running off. To the phone, Blue said, “Hello?”

“Hello and good morning, Jane.” Gansey spoke not with his completely formal tone, but with a hint of joviality in his tone. It was the sort of happiness that couldn’t be faked; no one could sound that happy about discussing foreign policy or tax brackets. It was the sort of happiness that Blue couldn’t help but smile along to, though a glance at the clock told her that she’d soon be late.

“And here I thought that we were settling into a routine,” she said with forced disapproval. “Is your clock broken, too?”

“Certainly not,” Gansey replied. “But you know us political types: always calling at the most inconvenient times. We do it on purpose, you know.”

Blue had to try very hard not to laugh. “Are you sure that this isn’t congress?” she teased. She had forgotten, for a moment, that much of her family was in the room with her, and now she had to pretend that she couldn’t feel them watching her. “Though I can’t imagine what you would want with me; I won’t be staging another political riot for at _least_ two weeks!”

Gansey laughed with the kind of carefree abandon that was supposed to have been bred out of him. Blue could imagine him tipping his head back, and she badly wished she was there to see if he did. After a moment, he said, “I wanted to hear your voice.” He made it sound so illicit, as though he were admitting to a want far less innocent.

Blue bit her lip, holding back a smile. “That can’t be the only reason you called.”

There was a pause. “No,” Gansey sighed. “It can’t.”

Blue hummed at the confirmation, holding the phone with her shoulder while she scraped out the last of her yogurt. “Well,” she said, “you’d better hurry up with it, then. I’m already running late for school.”

“Ah,” Gansey replied, “but I will soon be late as well.”

“That does not help your case,” Blue observed. “Really, I think it ought to mean that you’d want to get to your point more quickly. Come on; I don’t want to be on the phone with you all day.”

Gansey gasped dramatically. “Oh, she wounds me! Oh, I’ll never recover!”

Blue laughed, and she was about to come up with a witty retort when Orla whirled into the room. She spotted the phone in Blue’s hand, blood in the water. “Ooh,” she commented snidely. “Three raven boys in one week. Someone’s popular.”

“Hold on,” Blue said to the phone. She frowned at Orla. “What are you talking about? Three? It’s just been one yesterday, one today.” She wasn’t really sure that that was much better, but it was a point of pride.

Orla rolled her eyes monumentally. “Friday?” she prompted with an unnecessary level of attitude, especially considering that Blue had no idea what she was talking about. Orla clearly read this on her face, because she sighed loudly. “Lucille was supposed to tell you,” she complained, shaking her head. “Whatever. It’s not like you haven’t seen them.” She snagged a water bottle from the fridge and made to exit the room.

“Wait, Orla,” Blue protested, but Orla waved her off dismissively. Blue spent a moment debating whether she should go after her cousin, but she really was going to be late for school if she didn’t get going soon. Besides, she thought that Orla had probably been confused, and had attempted to cover for it instead of admitting her mistake.

“Sorry about that,” she said to Gansey.

“That’s fine,” he replied. “I have to go soon, though. Do you want to just meet up after school? We can go to Nino’s, or – hey! Ronan!”

There was a scuffle as Gansey lost control of the phone, and then it was Ronan speaking. “Hey, Sargent, how are you enjoying Gansey’s stall tactics?”

Blue rolled her eyes to herself. “Ronan Lynch on the phone,” she observed with false reverence. “To what do I owe this miracle?” 

“Shut the fuck up, Maggot,” Ronan grumbled. “I need to talk to you. Not on the phone. You want a ride?”

In the background of the call, Gansey protested, disbelievingly, “You don’t even use your own – you’re _stealing_ my phone!” Blue took this to mean that Ronan was headed out the door with Gansey’s cell phone, without waiting for her response.

“Hold on,” she said hurriedly. “First, tell Gansey that I’m not going to Nino’s; I already work there more than I want to. He can pick me up at my house, and we will discuss from there.” Ronan dutifully repeated the message, albeit with far more profanity. “And second,” Blue continued, “can you be here in less than two minutes? Otherwise I’m leaving without you.”

Ronan scoffed. “Can I be there in less than two minutes?” he repeated scornfully. “Have you met me?”

“If you make me late for school,” Blue warned, “I will not hesitate to hit you. I can’t afford to be late to Lit again.” She grimaced at the thought and added bitterly, “Even if Mr. Walters is a sexist asshole.”

“Sounds like you want to hit him more than me,” Ronan said, split between amusement and suggestion. Before Blue could sarcastically ask if he was advocating for expulsion, Ronan said, “Okay, I’m hanging up now. Don’t make this difficult, Sargent; I’ll be there in a minute.” Then he treated her to the sound of his tires losing a good bit of their longevity and hung up.

Blue sighed and set the phone down on the kitchen counter as an act of passive-aggressive revenge for the power outage – it would probably be impossible to find within a matter of minutes. She searched out and found first her left boot, and then her right, and she scooped her school bag off the floor – for once, she was able to glory in the fact that she’d packed her things the night before. For parting words, she pointed at her mother and said, “We’re talking about this power outage later.”

Maura, casually prodding at one of Al’s cards with a plastic bendy straw, replied, “It seems as though you’re already quite busy later.”

Blue scowled, but facts were rather difficult to deflect, so she was stuck with the rather pathetic rejoinder of, “If you aren’t going to help me, stay out of my business.” It was unfair, because Maura had offered what she felt was the best help that she could with the Ronan-Adam situation; it wasn’t her fault that Blue didn’t like that that help mainly consisted of her resolving to remain minimally involved. It was also unfair because, as far as Blue knew, her mother couldn’t often help what psychic information she gathered. But that didn’t mean that Blue was going to take it back.

After allowing a couple of seconds to be sure that no one had a witty retort, Blue stomped dramatically from the kitchen. In fact, she stomped all the way out the front door before stopping at the cusp of the driveway for Ronan.

Even seconds could feel like an impossibly long measure of time when slotted into the position of waiting, but Ronan somehow managed to arrive with impossible speed. Blue hardly had time to glance down at her watch, and then he was blaring his car horn at the entire neighborhood. “Come on, Maggot,” he yelled with the sort of enthusiasm that he reserved mainly for times that he was about to make someone’s life more difficult. “We don’t have all day! You wouldn’t want to be late for sexism class!”

“Oh my god.” Blue covered her face and hoped that none of her neighbors were watching as she hurried into Ronan’s car. Her cheeks were so hot that she thought the skin might melt off. “What the hell, Ronan? That – oh my god.”

Ronan just grinned and added some tire marks to Blue’s street. “You have to pay the ferryman to reach the underworld,” he informed her.

“Next time, I’m walking to the underworld,” she muttered.

Ronan laughed, leaning his head back in wild abandon as the wind rushed in through the open windows. Blue thought that it probably would have been safer to walk, too. Ronan said, “You know you love seeing my face in the morning, Sargent.”

“Yeah, in the obituary section,” she grumbled, crossing her arms grumpily. It was cruel, but Blue was not in the mood for Ronan’s happy-offensive antics. Cutting right to the point, she asked, “What do you want?”

Ronan’s smile fell away immediately, his expression turning serious. He tapped the steering wheel with his thumb and cleared his throat. “I want to talk about Adam.”

Blue stared. She hadn’t imagined that Ronan would so willingly bring it up, no matter what she had said about being available. It was a good thing, she supposed, that he was looking for advice, confirmation, whatever; the problem was that she wasn’t sure she could provide it. But, of course, she was absolutely going to try. “Yeah,” she said, “okay. What’s up?”

Ronan continued tapping his thumb, considering. It was a rare thing to see Ronan so pensive, and Blue wasn’t quite sure what to do with it, so she waited. Finally, Ronan said, “What does he like to do?”

It was such an unexpected question that Blue looked at Ronan and away again twice before she even began to consider an answer. The problem was that she didn’t really _know_ what Adam liked to do; free time for him was more a myth than an option, and time wasted at Nino’s or Monmouth was usually Adam’s passive acceptance of someone else’s choice rather than his own. Probably the best person to answer that question was Ronan himself, but Ronan didn’t remember. There was something kind of hollowing about that; Adam had lost the person who knew him best, and he didn’t even realize it. Then again, that might have been true for Ronan, too.

“Blue?” Ronan prompted. If he had been anyone else, Ronan might have been pleading for answers just then, but he was Ronan, and so his words were quiet, but not pathetic. Ronan kept his desperation buried deep inside himself, but Blue had gotten better at guessing where to dig, and Adam had always been a bright red X.

“You guys do dumb teenage boy stuff all the time,” she offered. “He always says that he tried to talk you out of whatever, but I’m pretty sure he always enjoys it.”

Ronan looked pained, fighting a war with himself on a battlefield of words slain without voice. Finally, he managed to ask, his sentence curdled with mocking, “Are you saying that I should take Parrish out to piss on cop cars and break into storefronts?”

Blue was somewhat appalled. The only way that she managed to keep her classification of Ronan as one of her friends was to remind herself that he was being awful because he was afraid of being labeled anything better. “I said _dumb_ , not _illegal_ ,” she snapped. She took another minute to cool down, and then she added in a tone only slightly less caustic, “You know – simple stuff. Throwing rocks at Monmouth. Being too loud in Nino’s. Jumping off of things. Stuff like that.”

Ronan was silent, which may have been his way of apologizing for his previous tone. At least, that was the most generous explanation. Blue let herself stew a little longer in her annoyance, watching as Ronan blew through the unnecessary stop sign at the corner of Wright and Maple for the third time. There were only a few minutes left before Blue really did need to be at school, even if she couldn’t muster up any guilt over wanting to be anywhere else.

“Are you actually planning on ‘taking Adam out,’ or are you getting on my nerves for no reason?” Blue grumbled, wanting to shove Ronan back into the conversation only a little more than she wanted to annoy him.

Ronan’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “No,” he said ambiguously. “I don’t – I just want to know him better.” He slammed his left palm against the wheel in frustration. “The whole fucking universe keeps telling me that I should know all this goddamned shit about him, and _I just don’t know_ , okay? Why can’t somebody just fucking _tell_ me what it is that I’m supposed to know, just one goddamned time? Is that so fucking much to ask?”

Blue rolled her eyes at him. “You know, I didn’t have to agree to this,” she reminded him, crossing her arms. “In fact, you can drop me off any time now.” She peered out the window, as if searching for a good spot to have Ronan pull over.

Ronan made a noise of irritation. “Jesus fuck, Sargent,” he muttered. “Can you just –” he made a motion with one hand, a half-formed and aborted punch directed at the stereo. “Tell me something! _Anything!_ Tell me – tell me that I’m not better off!”

Blue stared, as fixated as if Ronan had still been shouting. Instead, even as he led the steering wheel around street corners, he was unnaturally still. Blue wasn’t sure that he could see the entire road at the angle he’d fixed his eyes, but there certainly wasn’t any chance of him meeting her gaze. He’d clearly said more than he’d meant to, and it had been as desperate as Blue had ever heard him. “Ronan,” she murmured.

He flinched away from the hand that she tried to place comfortingly on his shoulder. “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t treat me like I’m some little kid who doesn’t understand what’s going on. I’m not going to throw a fucking temper tantrum or something.”

Any other time, Blue might have pointed out that he already had. Now, however, his words were so reminiscent of her own complaints to her mother the day before that they sang in resonance with the longing of her own soul. Blue had felt like such a victim of injustice on realizing that she was being excluded from her mother’s knowledge; Ronan had been feeling that way for days now, and the one thing that Blue could do to help was also the one thing that could make things worse. There was a chasm between Ronan and Adam now, an eroded path of memories and emotions that had been swept away by silent and mysterious forces. The one thing that wasn’t keeping them apart, though, was the cumbersome truth of just how deep that chasm went. It was the sort of truth, Blue realized, that could stand in between two people like a dirty window, leaving them both looking for the shape that they thought they were supposed to see, as opposed to the one that was really there.

But still Blue understood Ronan’s frustration. After what her mom had told her, Blue wanted badly to ask Ronan how he could fix this, even as he was expecting someone else to answer the same question for him. She could understand how badly he wanted someone to give him the answers, even though he would likely hate that. It was possible that he would hate anything that Blue could tell him, but she had to try.

She sighed, strategically using the breath to shift a loose strand of hair out of her eyes. It didn’t go far, and she had to reach up to tuck it back into one of her clips. Finally, she looked at Ronan. “You’re not better off,” she offered gently. She frowned to herself, because that didn’t seem encouraging at all. She added, “At least, you aren’t right now. In the long run… I don’t know. Do you feel like you’re better off?”

They were pulling up to the corner of Wright and Maple again, and this time, possibly for the first time in his life, Ronan made use of the stop sign. It was a full and complete stop: the sort you made when you needed to search for something, not the kind where you planned to keep going. Ronan tugged on the parking brake and rested his forehead on the steering wheel. “I _feel_ like this is really goddamn fucked up,” he said to the speedometer.

“So is life,” Blue replied matter-of-factly. “That’s not an excuse. You’re Ronan Lynch: you eat ‘really goddamn fucked up’ for breakfast.”

Ronan laughed a little, tilting his head to look at her. His expression turned serious, or at least as serious as it could be when he was trying to pretend that it wasn’t. “I don’t know how to talk to him,” he said, and it came out in such a way that it was immediately clear that this had been his concern all along. Blue gestured for a continuation, and Ronan sat up, hands still on the wheel, but his eyes focused entirely on that neglected stop sign. He said, “He’s so much better with words. I don’t know how to – I don’t know. Not piss him off.”

Blue considered this. “Well, I know I don’t have to tell you that you aren’t going to do any worse than Gansey, and I still managed to forgive him. And that’s – that’s Adam, too. He’ll forgive you. Just don’t say anything too stupid.” Ronan made a face at the lack of substantive advice, so Blue added, “I think he’s probably just as worried about saying the wrong thing to you. You guys just need to be honest; it’ll make everything go a lot more smoothly.”

Ronan grimaced as he put the car back in gear. “You aren’t helpful,” he said, but maybe that was because Blue hadn’t said anything that he hadn’t already known. She honestly didn’t know what additional advice Ronan was looking for; short of scripting his side of the conversation for him, she didn’t think there was anything else that she _could_ say.

Then again, maybe Ronan had deemed her response acceptable after all, because he was actually headed in the direction of the school now. Blue waited for him to say something else, but he kept silent until they were almost in sight of the school and Blue asked him to pull over. “Can’t wait to get away from me, Sargent?” he joked.

Blue, because she didn’t quite know how to admit that she didn’t want to be seen with him, in his car, shot him a cool look, but it quickly fell away when she saw the way he was picking absentmindedly at his wrist bands. Instead of finding a witty retort, Blue reached over and gave Ronan’s arm a squeeze. “You’ll be fine,” she assured him. “Just remember: if you’re thinking it, say it. Unless it’s something vulgar.”

Ronan twisted his mouth into an ugly shape as he started on a retort, but Blue cut him off with a hand. “Like that,” she said. “Don’t say anything like whatever you were about to say. Just – be a decent human, or something.” She climbed out of the car, but leaned in through the open window to add, “And tell Adam hi for me.”

Ronan smirked, an almost-successful attempt at burying his lingering doubts. “Don’t punch any teachers,” he called as he pulled away. Blue hoped that he at least got a glimpse of her middle finger in his rearview mirror.


	21. A Thousand Oceans of Implausibility

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam is in the Latin classroom having Emotions, with a capital "E."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so... I'm really sorry it's been so long! I will always promise you: I'm not going to abandon this fic. Honestly, I've been kind of working on it this whole time; I just didn't have a lot of time. Sorry! I can almost guarantee that the next chapter will be done in less time than this one was, though!

It was early as ever when Adam arrived to the Latin classroom. It was empty as ever, too – or, not as ever, but as much as Adam remembered it. As much as he could remember, Monday had been the exception: Ronan crash-landing at his desk; carefree banter; a sort of primitive joy leaking through Adam’s veins that made every awful thing about Aglionby completely worth it. That had been a one-time thing, as far as Adam knew. Of course it was a one-time thing.

And yet, this solitude felt unfamiliar. Unlike the day before, when he’d been so relieved to have a little more time to swallow his pride and sort out his words, today Adam felt alone in a way he wasn’t used to. He felt abandoned, almost, and he could hardly stop himself from counting down the seconds until Ronan would arrive. Not that he really expected Ronan to arrive early.

Adam shook his head. This was ridiculous. This absolutely couldn’t be the first time he’d been alone here before school, if only because he didn’t know what to do with the idea that Ronan had been here every day with him. That Ronan had shown up to school early, knowing that Adam would be there with him. Maybe _because_ he knew that Adam would be there with him.

But, no. That was just too impossible. Adam couldn’t believe it, even if every tug of his heartstrings seemed to nudge him towards accepting it. It had to be pride, or maybe wishful thinking, because Adam couldn’t deny even to himself that he wanted Ronan’s attention for more reasons than just to know that he’d earned it. Though, maybe that too boiled down to pride.

On reflex, Adam tilted his head up towards the clock hanging above the whiteboard, looking for some reassurance that he wouldn’t be alone with his thoughts for much longer, however much of that the time could provide. But the clock could offer him no comfort at all, because its hands were completely still, frozen at 9:56 and 23 – no, 22 – seconds.

For a moment, Adam had to wonder whether it was the clock that had stopped, or if it was time itself, altered in some strange way like wind twisting around his shoulders. He checked his watch, though – a backup that seemed far more likely to be broken than the school’s clock – and it was still going. So, time kept on, and it was only the wall clock that had fallen behind. It seemed utterly illogical that batteries would still die in a place that didn’t desperately need them to keep working.

Adam shook himself off of that path of thought. The world wasn’t fair, but it wasn’t unfair, either. Calling the world unjust would only create more misery, and there was no point in wishing for change – that just took time away from actually creating it. Of course batteries died, and of course Ronan wasn’t going to show up before everyone else; any other scenario would just be begging favors of an impassive and uninterested universe.

Still, hope was a stubborn thing, and it was another minute before Adam could force himself to drag tomorrow’s homework out of his bag to check over. He couldn’t concentrate, though, and the verbs seemed to glide around the page. There was something sticking in the back of his head, needling at him like a challenge, a puzzle. He looked up at the clock again, before he remembered that it wasn’t working, and that needled at him, too. There was something about it…

 _No_ , Adam forced himself to think. _It isn’t the clock._ Because it couldn’t be; it was never something so simple. No, it had to be Ronan. Ronan, and his reckless grin. Ronan, and his love of Latin. Ronan, and his oh-so-familiar home. Ronan, making Adam’s heart beat so fast sometimes that it felt like it could outrace the BMW. Ronan, because Adam had a knot of emotion slowly wrapping around his heart, and he could only feel it getting tighter.

Adam glanced back down at the desk. His hand had curled into a fist around the edge of it without him even realizing, a match for his constricted heart. That was what Ronan did to him: he wormed his way in and made Adam’s body move without his permission. It was a hand clenched tight to keep from drowning in emotions. It was leaning just that little bit closer when they were sitting together. It was an empty feeling over every skin cell he had, because all he wanted was to drag Ronan into a hug and never let go.

“Fuck,” Adam swore softly to himself. It made him feel a little bit like Ronan, and that was a confusing comfort. It was just this desperation for knowledge, he told himself. It was just that Ronan was something that had been there all along, without Adam knowing, and now he wanted to take it all in at once. The magnitude of it all was suffocating him, even as he felt like he wouldn’t be able to breathe without the promised possibility of reinstating whatever connection he’d had with Ronan, so strong that someone had decided it needed to be taken away. Adam didn’t really have any indication that that was the case, of course, but it was a strangely nice option, and so it was the one that he had secretly come to believe. That probably made it more likely to be false than anything else, but Adam needed a working hypothesis in order to go on, and this one was easily slotted into his cautious approach to the world as a whole. It slotted into his less-cautious approach to Ronan, too.

Still, it didn’t have much bearing on Adam’s current situation: alone in the Latin classroom and missing someone he hardly knew at all, who he’d seen fewer than twelve hours earlier. The only thing that really _did_ matter now was that Ronan was going to be here in – Adam remembered to check his watch this time – eighteen minutes, bringing with him the crushing collision of expectation and reality. And for all of Adam’s wishing that Ronan was already here, he somehow didn’t feel like he’d properly prepared to see him at all. Ronan was an impossible course, a failure rate of 99%, and Adam hadn’t done any of the required reading. He felt untethered, drifting downstream with the paranoia that a waterfall lay ahead, and he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He couldn’t stop thinking about _Ronan_.

It made sense that Adam was thinking so much about Ronan, though, even aside from whatever other emotions were tangled up in there. Ronan represented every wrong thing that Adam had ever believed, every fairy tale he’d told himself would never come true. To find out that the impossible existed was bound to be an adjustment, was bound to captivate every brain cell Adam had. The part that didn’t make sense was how much Adam wanted to do with those thoughts. He wanted to think about nothing and no one else. He wanted to spend his entire life learning every nuance of Ronan Lynch. He wanted to put it all into practice; to surprise Ronan, make him smile, make him laugh. He wanted to hear and taste and feel Ronan’s genuine laugh forever. He wanted to say all of it to Ronan; to tell him that Adam couldn’t get him out of his head; to tell him that their lives were so intricately entwined already, but Adam wanted to get twisted up in it even more, until he couldn’t possibly imagine what life without Ronan would even look like. God, he wanted to say it.

Well, forget caution. Caution was comfortable, and it was safe, and Adam needed it, but impossible things never happened because people were being cautious. Gansey hadn’t gotten to explore the world because he’d sat quietly and wanted in silence. And Adam hadn’t become the magician by letting the words in his head dissolve him away. It was like that with Ronan: there was something that Adam wanted so badly, even if he couldn’t be sure that it existed, and even if he couldn’t be sure that it was safe to go looking. He couldn’t just sit here.

Before caution could talk him out of it, Adam reached into his bag and dug around until he found the book he was looking for: a bilingual edition of Descartes’ _Meditations_ , in English and the original Latin. They were reading it for Literature – in English, not in Latin, but it struck Adam as incredibly efficient to study for both subjects at once, though he doubted that that had been Ronan’s intention. He hadn’t had much of a chance to look it over since Ronan had forced it on him last night, but it was so well-worn that he thought the response to Ronan’s “I’ve read it already” should have been “How many times?” It also made him wonder just how serious Ronan had been about his declaration that Descartes was a “goddamn asshole.”

This wasn’t really about Ronan’s opinion of Descartes, though. It was more about a few of Descartes’ words, stuck in Adam’s head because they felt so utterly resonant. He knew, of course, that Descartes had meant something entirely different, that he couldn’t have possibly imagined having his musings applied to a situation like this, but Adam didn’t think that that really mattered. Here were Descartes thoughts in Adam’s head, right alongside the memories of the last night’s half-joking discussion of whether or not it was just pretentious to philosophize in Latin, and here was Adam tracing a quote onto the whiteboard. And all that mattered was the picture in Adam’s head of Ronan’s grin, Ronan’s laugh, when he saw it. It put a smile on Adam’s own face to think about it. Trying not to feel foolish for the joy of anticipation, Adam took a step back to admire his work.

_Sed quia tam cito deponi veteris opinionis consuetudo non potest, placet hîc consistere, ut altius haec nova cognitio memoriae meae diuturnitate meditationis infigatur._

Considering that Ronan would probably carelessly translate it to something like, “Descartes doesn’t know what the fuck the world is, so he’s going to sit around and think about it some more,” it was probably a little long-winded for the point that Adam was trying to make, but he knew – hoped – that Ronan would understand, and feel the same way. Adam knew that his memories were wrong, that it was hard to believe sometimes that he really knew Ronan better than this, but he also knew that what he wanted to do about it was to maybe sit down with Ronan for hours or days and discover it all again.

Finally feeling a little bit settled, Adam hid the marker and eraser in the last place the sub would ever think to look (underneath the desk) and returned to his seat. He could feel his heart beating fast, fast, fast, and it felt like he was grinning so wide that it could be seen from space. Maybe he wasn’t settled, after all; he just wasn’t restless in the same way. He wasn’t waiting impatiently for a day that wasn’t going to anything special now; he was waiting for a day that was going to be spectacular. He knew he was building it up too much in his head, but every time he tried to talk himself down, he just thought of Ronan’s smile, and he thought that even just that would be a thrill of sunlight in an otherwise dull world.

 _It’s too much,_ Adam thought, but he wasn’t sure whether he was referring to the gesture, or to his expectations for it. Maybe both. Maybe neither. Maybe everything with Ronan was too much, and maybe Adam didn’t care. Ronan could never be contained by something so simple as expectation, and he would always overflow such a small container as a heart. And despite that, Adam wanted more – more memories; more time; more glances. He felt like he could spend a hundred years with Ronan, learning something new every day, and he would still want more – just _one more day_. And he would want it every day of his life.

From the hallway, the sound of the front door shuddering open crept into the classroom. The floorboards groaned beneath the weight of a single person, and a glance at Adam’s watch confirmed that it was still too early for most of the student body. Unable to stop the hope spreading through him, Adam thought, _Ronan?_

But it wasn’t Ronan. Of course it wasn’t Ronan; Adam had always known that it wouldn’t be Ronan. And yet, he could hardly hide his disappointment as Gansey stepped into the classroom.

“Morning,” Adam greeted solemnly, voice absent of all the excitement that would have leaked into it if it had been Ronan saving him from boredom. “You’re here early.”

Gansey sighed, rubbing his eyes tiredly. “I didn’t get much sleep,” he said. “I’ve been about ready to leave for the day since –” he yawned – “I don’t know, four?”

Adam nodded sympathetically. He knew about Gansey’s struggles to find sleep, and he could certainly relate to the feeling of exhaustion that could creep up after a night of less sleep than he’d hoped. The really terrible thing was that he was beginning to get used to it, exhaustion curled up around him like a too-tight, too-hot, too-itchy sweater that he could never take off. What Adam would give to have the luxury of insomnia, to be tired for no better reason than that he’d been staring at ceiling. It wasn’t really a fair comparison, but some illogical bit of Adam’s brain was convinced that his over-worked exhaustion must be somehow worse, perhaps simply because he was Adam Parrish, and everything always had to be worse.

But he couldn’t say any of that. What he could say was, “Are you going to make it through the day?” And he didn’t have to fake the concern, because Gansey looked about ready to pass out on the desk.

Gansey yawned again. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “It’s only just hitting me, and I’m sure it’ll be gone… at some point.”

Adam was doubtful, but he thought it polite not to mention it. “You should get some coffee or something,” he suggested, but Gansey only shook his head.

“I already had some,” he said miserably. “I think the faculty may have switched to a cheaper brand in the lounge. I barely feel equipped to sit in this chair right now.” He sighed. “I would text Ronan or Henry or someone to grab me some, but… Ronan has my phone.”

Adam sat up a little straighter. “What?” he asked, trying not to sound too interested with the topic switching to Ronan. “Why?”

“I was talking to Blue,” Gansey said, rubbing at his forehead. “I think he’s driving her to school.”

Adam wrinkled his brow. He almost asked “Why?” again, but his words got ahead of him, and he said instead, “He took your phone _and_ your girlfriend?”

Gansey, head now on the desk, let out a small laugh. He mumbled something that Adam was pretty sure was, “He’s not even interested in either of those things.”

“Hmm,” Adam agreed. He glanced towards the front of the room. “Do you think he’ll be on time?” But Gansey only made a noncommittal noise, and Adam was left to quell his own anxieties. So, he returned to his attempts at studying, and every few seconds, he told himself, _He’ll be here._ But it was getting harder and harder to believe as time dragged Adam ever-forward.

And then, the most anticipated of sounds – the reluctant opening of the front door. This time, it wasn’t just one pair of feet stomping down the floorboards, though; it was so many. The door opened again and again, and the halls bubbled up with the early-morning chatter of unwilling students. And, long before Adam was ready for it, the tidal wave swept into the Latin classroom, and the day began. Without Ronan. Adam felt his heart and his mood crash to the ground.

Time kept on. Slowly, the classroom filled with its students, save Ronan, and before long, the sub swept into the room, too.

“Well,” said the sub, “shall we get started?” He didn’t even bother looking for the eraser, but swiped his hand through the words on the board, so easily erasing what it had seemed so significant to write. Just like that. A single second, and what Adam had done was rendered pointless. It felt like Pompeii was burning somewhere inside of his ribcage.

Forward and to his left, Adam could feel Gansey looking at him. “Ronan wasn’t here,” he observed slowly, quietly. Adam didn’t acknowledge it, but instead stared straight ahead, eyes locked blankly on the blank board as the sub actually put effort into looking for the marker. He couldn’t meet Gansey’s eyes, couldn’t acknowledge what he’d tried to do. He felt so foolish, so cheated. It wasn’t fair that he hadn’t gotten what he’d been looking for, but he should never have expected anything else. He’d spent so much time wishing for life to happen faster, to bring him to the next thing, but now that he’d tried to slow down and appreciate something, time had yanked it away from him. That was just the way it worked for Adam; he wasn’t meant to have time to catch his breath.

“Adam?” Gansey prompted quietly, but Adam couldn’t look at him. He felt shame coursing through his blood – so familiar, but still like poison – and he couldn’t move for fear of drawing more of it in. But Gansey didn’t let it go, because of course he wouldn’t. “Adam,” he pressed, “what did you –?”

Adam turned to him, his shoulders stiff and muscles tensed. “It doesn’t matter,” he said in a low voice that he hoped rang with finality. This conversation was over, as far as he was concerned, because there was no way that he could speak to Gansey the words he hadn’t even had the courage to do more than write to Ronan. He’d made what people would probably call a grand gesture, and it had backfired. And it had left him feeling emptied out, like he’d put all of himself into that quoted phrase, and then he’d been wiped off the board, too.

Gansey frowned. The look on his face was puzzled, fighting hard not to turn into sympathetic. He didn’t say anything else, though, because just then the sub emerged from the bowels of the desk, dust on his slacks, but marker triumphantly in his hand. “Well,” he reiterated, “shall we begin?”

At the back of the classroom, the door banged open. Adam closed his eyes. _I’m not going to look, I’m not going to look._ He didn’t think he could take it if it wasn’t Ronan, and he didn’t think he could take it if it was, either. He couldn’t entirely remember the significance of Latin outside of whether or not Ronan appeared.

“Nice of you to join us, Mr. Lynch,” the sub said stonily. _I’m not going to look_ , Adam repeated again, more out of pride than self-preservation now.

“Hey, Parrish,” Ronan breathed too close to Adam’s ear. “Sleeping on the job?”

Adam didn’t move, didn’t breathe; he was too busy trying not to be appreciative of Ronan remembering to speak on his right side for either of those things. There was the soft sound of something being placed on his desk, and Adam finally opened his eyes as Ronan shoved himself into his chair. Adam didn’t look at him, and the sub could have been juggling flaming bowling pins for all he knew; the only thing registered by his eyes was the cup of coffee on the desk in front of him.

Gansey, his exhaustion easily overruling his instinct for respectfulness, said quietly to Ronan, “I don’t suppose –”

“Take it,” Adam interrupted, loudly enough that the sub cleared his throat in irritation. Adam couldn’t look away from the cup still, but he repeated, a little more quietly this time, “Take it, Gansey. I don’t want it.”

“Adam –” Gansey started, sounding somewhat conciliatory, but Adam interrupted him by shoving the coffee into his hands. He still hadn’t looked at Ronan.

Gansey considered the coffee for a minute, guilt written across his face. His eyes flicked back and forth between Adam and Ronan; Adam refused to look, but he thought that Ronan was focused entirely on him. He didn’t want to think about what might be going through Ronan’s head right now. He wasn’t going to feel bad for this, no matter how much that tiny part of him wanted to.

“Thanks,” Gansey said at length, taking a careful sip of the coffee. He turned back to the front of the room, and Ronan did not. Adam could feel his eyes, drilling through into that part of Adam that was so unbearably susceptible to Ronan’s charms. He tried to cling to his disappointment like a life raft – to remind himself that there were _reasons_ that he shouldn’t be looking to Ronan for anything, not the least of which being that he hardly knew Ronan at all. He tried to remind himself that he didn’t need Ronan, that he’d been fine without him before. He didn’t need Ronan now, either, he told himself.

It didn’t work.

In spite of himself, Adam imagined nudging Ronan, gesturing to the stalled clock. He imagined Ronan’s wide grin, Ronan making a comment about it to the sub. He imagined, impossibly, Ronan starting a revolt among the students, every one of them getting up and leaving the room like class really was long over. He imagined Ronan taking his hand, pulling him out into the hallway, leading him to some secluded corner where it didn’t matter that their entire class was going to get detention. He imagined the shape of Ronan’s lips as he asked, “Did you –?” But he wouldn’t have to finish the question, because he would read Adam’s expression like an obscure text in a language only he knew. And then –

Adam shook himself out of the fantasy. It was illogical, he knew; impossible. And there was still the sour taste of disappointment on his tongue: a thousand fantasies of Ronan’s reaction to the whiteboard, some as simple as just that smile that could make Adam feel like he’d fallen into something timeless, and some even more complex and unlikely than the one he’d just extricated himself from. A thousand oceans of implausibility to drown in.

But not even one of those imaginings had taken root; Ronan had been late, and he’d missed every one of them. Adam knew, technically speaking, that he could say the words to Ronan himself. He could write them on the board again tomorrow, and every day until Ronan saw. He could write them on a slip of paper and slide them across the aisle. He could even choke out his own words, a hundred times more heartfelt and dangerous than those he’d borrowed. But it wouldn’t be the same, and Adam was so helplessly angry about that.

So, Adam just kept his eyes on the front of the room, watching the whiteboard that had been wiped of his soul. He kept pretending that he couldn’t feel Ronan watching him, because he didn’t think that he would keep hold of his pride if he admitted it.

And, eventually, Ronan looked away.


	22. Hope and Hopelessness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ronan is determined to make things right with Adam.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know - I've taken a excessive amount of time writing the chapter again. I'm so sorry. I know I say this every time, but I'm really going to try to be better with the next chapter.
> 
> That said, I just wanted to say thank you to anyone who's still with me here - those of you who have been here from the beginning, and those who joined somewhere along the way. And to anyone who's just picked this up, if there is anyone, too. I really appreciate all of your comments, kudos, etc. Thank you for giving me a reason to keep writing.
> 
> For this chapter, for those you who may not know, APUSH = AP US History. You can't convince me that Adam wouldn't take all the Advanced Placement courses he possibly could.

“Hey, fuck-brain,” Ronan called out to catch Gansey’s attention as he left his third period class. Gansey, ever the parent, was immediately disapproving, though it was hard to tell whether that stemmed from the rude greeting or from the fact that Ronan had clearly walked out of his own class well before the bell in order to be in the hallway waiting for the end of Gansey’s. It didn’t really matter, though; Ronan had never really valued class time that much, and this was an emergency besides.

“Ronan, please,” Gansey sighed, rubbing his temples. “I am so, so tired. Can you just talk yourself out of skipping this time?”

Ronan replied with a smile that was as automatic as it was terrible. He melted off the lockers to join Gansey on the trek to his next class. “If I was going to leave, I wouldn’t check in with you first.”

“No, I suppose not,” Gansey agreed. “You’d probably go to –” He broke off with a sharp look at Ronan that didn’t really hide the fact that he’d almost said _Adam_. “What is it that you wanted?”

Ronan shrugged, suddenly feeling self-conscious. He’d wanted to talk about Adam, but he couldn’t think of a way around the fact that Gansey had so deliberately avoided that topic just a moment ago. He told himself that normal Ronan behavior would be to bring it up anyways, with an extra helping of pleasure at Gansey’s discomfort. He couldn’t bring himself to find joy in it, but he did say, “I want to know what’s up with Parrish.”

Gansey glanced at him. “I don’t know what you mean,” he lied. Badly.

Ronan huffed. “Sure you don’t,” he said. “So, you didn’t notice the way he refused to look at me during Latin? Or the way he ran out of there the second the class ended?” Or the way that Adam had pretended not to see him when they’d crossed paths between second and third period, but Gansey hadn’t been there for that. Ronan tried to tell himself that it wouldn’t hurt if only he could forget last night – if he could make himself believe that it had been a dream or delusion, something he’d interpreted the wrong way – but he couldn’t quite talk himself into buying that. This would have hurt yesterday, or the day before, or back when he’d had memories of Adam. It just would have hurt a little bit less.

“It really isn’t my place to say,” Gansey hedged. “You should really be talking to Adam about this.”

“Gansey, he won’t even fucking acknowledge that I exist!” Ronan pointed out loudly, not caring about the glances and whispers it stirred up. “Just fucking tell me what the fuck you know!”

Gansey shook his head, kind of to himself, like he was dealing with a particularly difficult child. “Calm down,” he said. “I’m sure it will blow over.”

“But?” Ronan pressed, adding an extra helping of insolence to express his annoyance over being told to calm down.

Gansey sighed. “But.” He winced, clearly reluctant to be speaking of Adam without Adam present. “All right, I don’t know if this has anything to do with anything, but there was something written on the board today. Before you got there. I got the feeling it wasn’t there for my sake.”

Ronan felt like he’d been bowled over. “Adam wrote on the board?” he asked. The words _for me?_ died in his throat. It couldn’t have been. “What – what did he write?”

“I don’t know.” Gansey shook his head, looking sorrier than Ronan had expected. “I didn’t really realize it was anything in time to read it.” He sent Ronan a pointed look. “I was a little tired.”

Ronan scowled back. He didn’t feel guilty; if Gansey had had with Blue the night that Ronan had had with Adam, he wouldn’t have been able to sleep or sit still or be quiet, either. Or maybe he would have – maybe last night hadn’t really been anything. But it had _felt_ like something: sitting on the couch at the Barns with Adam, shoulders knocking into each other as they ate Mac  & Cheese with soft music filling a silence that hadn’t felt awkward to begin with; parking the BMW in a field halfway back and watching the stars from the hood; sitting on the top of the stairs outside Adam’s apartment, pretending that they weren’t putting off “good night.” Could Ronan really be blamed for waking Gansey with a slammed door at 1:30 in the morning after that? Could he really be blamed for restlessly bouncing a ball against his door, or for playing paper basketball with Chainsaw after Gansey shut down his first idea? Ronan didn’t think so.

“Ronan,” Gansey prodded. He laid a hand on Ronan’s arm, but Ronan shrugged it off.

“Where’s Adam right now?” he demanded. Or, he tried to demand it, but his voice came out more like an echo. He was only mostly sure that he wanted to face Adam shunning him again, the possibility of Adam deciding that he didn’t want to hear what Ronan had to say. He knew that he had to try, but he kind of wished that he didn’t have to be there for it.

Gansey sighed, like he felt Ronan’s apprehension too. Or maybe simply like he was tired and wanted the day to end. “I don’t think you’re thinking this through,” he said.

“Gansey,” Ronan tried again, keeping his voice firm this time, “where’s Adam? What class does he have?”

Rubbing his forehead as if he was attempting to ward off a sleep-deprivation headache, Gansey frowned at the floor. “History, I think,” he said finally. “APUSH? Yeah, probably. But, Ronan –”

“Right,” Ronan said without waiting for Gansey to finish. He started away from Gansey, toward the history classrooms. “Thanks.”

“No, Ronan!” Gansey caught his arm to keep him from going. “You have class!” Ronan stared him down – they both knew how inconsequential that was to Ronan – until Gansey added the obvious, “Adam has class, too.”

And just like that, Ronan was thwarted. He didn’t need Gansey to tell him how much Adam would care about getting held up from getting to class on time, or especially about missing it altogether. The only thing that might happen if Ronan tried to catch Adam now would be that Adam hated him even more.

“Let go of me, man,” Ronan muttered, wrenching his arm away before Gansey had a chance to comply. He didn’t want to talk about this anymore. There wasn’t really a way to explain what he was feeling, the combination of hope and hopelessness. He wanted to believe that he hadn’t accidentally ruined everything with Adam, but he could think of nothing worse than to let himself be convinced that everything would be fine.

“What are you going to do?” Gansey sighed. He sounded now more like an ally than a supervisor, but that only made Ronan uncomfortable. He felt sure that Gansey must have caught a glimpse of emotion on his face, and Ronan hadn’t wanted to show any. At least, not to Gansey. He hadn’t really thought about what he would do when he saw Adam. That might have been a moot point, though, because Ronan was starting to think that he couldn’t control anything when it came to Adam.

“I’m going to wait outside his fucking classroom, and I’m going to tell him I’m sorry,” Ronan snapped, a little annoyed at the simplicity of his own plan. It didn’t feel like a big enough gesture for Adam. Adam deserved complexity, thoughtfulness, people who showed up on time and didn’t ruin his plans.

Gansey raised an eyebrow. “You’re going to spend all of fourth period standing outside of Adam’s classroom? You could go to your own class, you know.” It wasn’t a scold like Ronan had expected, though; Gansey sounded _amused_ , of all things.

“What else am I supposed to do?” Ronan asked. “I – I have to talk to him, Gansey. I just can’t leave it like this a second longer than I have to.” His words came out more earnest than he’d intended them to, but it seemed to work on Gansey, who sighed and waved him off down the hallway. Immediately, Ronan heeded his suggestion, making his way towards the history classrooms with manufactured confidence.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Gansey called after him, which was probably the worst encouragement he could have given. Ronan kept his shoulders straight like he hadn’t heard, like he wasn’t doubting himself with every fiber of his soul. As soon as the halls emptied, though, he slid down a row of lockers and landed on the floor, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

“I don’t think it’s a total disaster,” Noah said out of nowhere, so completely unannounced that it felt like Ronan had somehow skipped over several minutes and come back in the middle of this conversation. He didn’t bother to respond; he still didn’t want to talk about it.

Noah sat down beside Ronan, cross-legged and cheerful, and poked a glitter wand experimentally at Ronan’s ribs. Ronan let him do it the first couple of times, but then he got annoyed and snatched the toy away. “Where the fuck did you even get this?” he asked, tilting it around and watching the glitter shift inside the tube. Noah shrugged, and Ronan slid him a look. “You steal it? Nice, man.”

Noah was indignant. “I found it!” he replied. He reached over to take it back, and Ronan let him have it.

“You know they make those for little kids, right?” Ronan said. “It probably comes with a fucking label like, ‘ages ten and under.’”

Noah huffed and held the wand vertically to watch the glitter settle at the bottom. “Well, I’ve been dead less than ten years,” he commented. “Does that count?”

Ronan shook his head lightly. He studied the leather bands on his wrist for a minute in silence. Then, looking at Noah from the corner of this eye, he said, “You’re not going to go into some Confucius bullshit about how me and Adam are like the glitter in that tube and everything’s going to settle eventually, are you?”

Noah laughed delightedly. “I guess you’ll never know,” he crowed. “I don’t have to say it now!”

“It’s a shit analogy, man,” Ronan informed him.

“Oh, I know,” Noah agreed. He tilted the tube so that the glitter was unsettled again. “See? Anyone can stir this up. It would make a terrible metaphor for you and Adam. If I was going to do a demonstration, I would have brought some plaster of Paris or some shit!”

Ronan scowled. “I don’t need you trying to make me feel better or whatever,” he complained, picking at his wrist bands with a fingernail. “I’m fucking fine.”

Noah raised an eyebrow. “Why are you sitting on the floor, then?”

“Fine,” Ronan told him, getting to his feet to prove his point. “If you want me to wait somewhere else, I’ll wait somewhere else!”

Noah grinned like he’d won something. He was standing before Ronan could register that he intended to. He reached over and bopped the top of Ronan’s head with his glitter wand. “We can wait across from Adam’s classroom!” he decided cheerfully.

The anxiety that had been pinging just beneath the surface of Ronan’s consciousness suddenly burst forward with renewed strength. He couldn’t remotely convince himself that a poor outcome wasn’t the only option, or that even if things didn’t work out the way he wanted, it wouldn’t result in an irrecoverable apocalypse. He didn’t think that he could stand to have Noah watch him ruin things with Adam, or even ruin his thoughts with the dread of it. There was absolutely no way to put this into words that would actually make it out of his mouth, though, so Ronan had to push him away instead.

“Hey, no one invited you, man,” he growled. He didn’t think it came out just right – more like he was asking Noah for a favor than telling him to get lost – but it was the best he could do right now. It still seemed to do the trick with Noah.

“Wow, rude,” Noah said. “I get it – I know when I’m not welcome.” It hadn’t been said pathetically, but Ronan must have been getting soft, because he felt as guilty as if Noah had sounded genuinely hurt. He started to turn towards Noah, intending to apologize or something like it, but before he could even open his mouth, Noah had vanished, leaving the glitter wand to clatter to floor.

“Noah?” Ronan tried, wondering if Noah was still there invisibly, but there was no reply. He gave it another few seconds, and then he sighed and picked up the glitter wand and stuck it in his back pocket – he thought Noah might want it later. God, he really was turning soft. Though, if he was going to talk to Adam, maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.

Ronan shook his head at himself and shifted his shoulders into a confident position. He was Ronan Lynch, and nothing scared him, not even boys he couldn’t remember but wanted to hold onto forever. Not even the possibility that he’d ruined everything without even trying.

Okay, this wasn’t helping. Again, Ronan shook his head and resettled his shoulders. This time, he made himself start walking, determined to wait outside of Adam’s classroom just like Noah had suggested. He sort of wished Noah were still here to wait with him, but it was probably better that he was alone for this. It was Adam, after all – Ronan may not have known everything about Adam, but he knew enough to suspect that it would mean a whole lot more if he did this without leaning on anyone else. Besides, he didn’t think he wanted an audience for the part where he either laid out his heart on a silver platter or Adam tore it out of his chest.

That wasn’t a very nice way to think about it, of course, and Ronan didn’t think that Adam would want to hurt him on purpose. He didn’t want to think that he would be so vulnerable, either. It was just a little hard to believe that everything would work out okay, especially when he had to idly wait. He wished Noah would come back and take pity on him again. He wished Adam’s class would end early. He wished he could go back to this morning and get to Latin early, sit next to Adam, and tell him –

He didn’t know. Ronan had absolutely no idea what he was going to say to Adam, now or in any other scenario. He didn’t know how to structure whatever was going on inside his head into words, and especially not to the caliber of expression that Adam deserved. It felt like this all was some sort of punishment – Adam mad at him, Noah abandoning him – and there really wasn’t anyone to blame but himself. He wanted to go back to last night – to any of it, but especially to sitting on the steps outside Adam’s apartment. When Ronan had finally left, he’d regretted so badly that he hadn’t been brave enough to lean into Adam then, to rest his head against Adam’s, but he regretted it even more now. What more could the night have been if he had? How differently could the morning have played out?

He was pacing. He made himself stop, leaning against the lockers across from Adam’s classroom in an attempt at appearing casual. He scuffed his shoes against the floor. He took out Noah’s glitter wand and distractedly fiddled with it. He waited.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, fourth period ended. The hallways exploded with a million moving bits of the student body, and Ronan, the only still piece in the chaos, kept a hawk watch for Adam. Too long, too long, and Ronan started to think that maybe he’d just missed Adam somehow, skimmed right over him in the crowd. Maybe he should have asked Gansey where Adam’s locker was instead. Maybe he should have just burst right into the classroom and turned himself into even more of an idiot. Maybe he should have –

 _Adam._ There he was, finally, trailing out of the classroom with the last breaths of fourth period, chatting with the teacher. It was a very Gansey thing to do, but somehow Adam made it seem like something else entirely. Gansey spoke with his teachers like he was already one of them; Adam spoke with them like he wanted to be. Ronan didn’t even need to hear the words they were saying to know it was true; it was written in every syllable of Adam’s body language.

And then Adam spotted him. He froze for a just a piece of a second, and then his eyes went right to the ground. Then back to the teacher. Adam said something more, probably a goodbye, and Ronan hated that his hopeful, enthusiastic cheekbones had become eclipsed by his tense jaw.

For a ground-collapsing moment, Ronan thought that Adam was just going to pretend he hadn’t seen him at all. He couldn’t honestly say that he would have been surprised if Adam chose to just walk down the hall without giving Ronan another glance. As it was, Adam still didn’t really look at him, but he did cross the hallway to stand in front of him. Ronan hated that Adam wouldn’t look at him. It felt like something he needed, like it was essential to his existence and his sanity that Adam’s eyes were on him at least once in a day. If someone were to tell him right now exactly what it would take to make Adam look at him, Ronan would have done it in a heartbeat.

After just a still second too long, Adam poked the toe of his shoe into the floor. “Hey,” he said quietly.

Ronan let out a breath – part of him had thought Adam might never say a word to him again. “Hey,” he said back. “Listen, I’m sorry about. You know. I shouldn’t have been late.” He paused, looking for some hint of what to do next. Adam didn’t look up from the floor, really, but he had his head tilted just slightly, so Ronan knew he was listening. This was one of those rare occasions that silence wouldn’t work, so Ronan continued. “It’s just, damn it, I just keep fucking everything up between us. I don’t know what I’m doing, Adam. It seems like everything I do is wrong, and I just – I don’t know how to fix it.”

Adam mumbled something, picking at the edge of his sweater as he did. “What?” Ronan asked.

Adam looked up, finally, his eyes painful and sincere on Ronan’s. “You’re not doing anything wrong,” he said more loudly this time. He shook his head. “There isn’t exactly a rulebook for this, Ronan. It’s not you, okay? I shouldn’t have –” Adam rubbed the back of his neck, his eyes moving a little to the side. “I shouldn’t have gotten upset over it,” he said. “I know I shouldn’t have. And I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. I mean, I wasn’t trying to. I just… I don’t know. I needed some space.”

“Oh,” Ronan said. It took him a moment to find his tongue again. “It wasn’t your fault, either,” he added. “I don’t have to ask to know that this stuff is important to you, and I knew – I _knew_ that stopping for that coffee was going to make me late. I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking, or something.”

Adam shook his head. “It’s no one’s fault,” he decided. “This sort of thing happens, right? We just kind of –” He made a motion of his hands sliding past each other without touching. “We don't quite meet. I think the important thing is that we talk about it. And that we give each space if we need it.”

Ronan nodded. “Right. Right, I get that. I, uh, I’m sorry I came seeking you out like this.” He turned to go, but Adam grabbed his arm.

“Hey,” he said softly, “I don’t need space now.” He grinned in a sort of teasing, cheerful way. “And don’t think I forgot you promising we’d talk at lunch.”

Ronan couldn’t stop the smile that took over his face. “You still want to?”

Adam bumped into his shoulder. “Of course I do, Lynch. You’re going to tell me all your secrets.”

“Ha,” Ronan replied. “Fat chance.” But as they started down the hallway, part of him couldn’t help but think that if he had to share all his secrets with anyone, he would want it to be Adam. He couldn’t really handle the fact of that thought, so he added, “The only reason I would tell you my secrets is you might just forget them all.”  
Adam slid his eyes over, a smirk flirting with the corner of his lips. “The pot calls the kettle black,” he commented.

“Doesn’t mean the pot isn’t right,” Ronan retorted.

To Ronan’s delight, Adam laughed at that. It was dizzying sort of laugh, swirling around Ronan to the point that he couldn’t distinguish his own happiness from Adam’s. Apparently determined to finish him off, Adam followed up his miracle laugh with slipping his hand into Ronan’s. “Smart ass,” he accused, with what Ronan thought was a hint of fondness.

“Uh,” Ronan said articulately.

Adam’s steps slowed a little, and he stared down at their hands. His grip went slack. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t… really know why I did that.” He tried to pull away.

“Don’t – I – It’s fine,” Ronan said in a bit of a panic, clinging to Adam’s hand like it was the one thing keeping his night horrors at bay. He cleared his throat and loosened his grip a little. “I mean, I don’t mind,” he clarified. “It’s um, I don’t know.”

“Nice?” Adam suggested, giving Ronan’s hand a teasing squeeze.

“Uh, um, yeah,” Ronan stuttered. “That.”

Adam laughed again. Ronan wanted to spend half a century listening to Adam laugh – but only half, because he wanted to spend the other half just existing in the same space as him, and maybe holding his hand.

Neither of them tried to fill the silence when Adam finished laughing. For a minute, all the world felt filled with Adam’s hand resting loosely in Ronan’s, a feeling like nothing else was necessary. Then Adam spoke again, and Ronan remembered how much he loved talking with him. “Are we going to the cafeteria,” Adam asked a little shyly, “or did you want to go off campus?”

Ronan grinned. “Oh, I am all for ditching Gansey. You want to go back to Monmouth?”

“Hmm,” Adam considered. “I have a free period after lunch,” he offered. “We could go back to where we stopped last night?”

Ronan didn’t think his smile could possibly get any wider. “Going to classes hasn’t been my strong suit today anyways.”

Adam rolled his eyes. “I’m shocked.”

“Now who’s being a smart ass?” Ronan replied, nudging his shoulder into Adam’s. Adam didn’t answer beyond a muted smirk, but Ronan still felt like he had more to say, so he offered, “Hey, thank you, though. You know, for agreeing to lunch.”

Adam looked at him. “It wasn’t such a hard thing to agree to, you know,” he said. “I want to.”

Ronan shrugged. “Well, then, thanks for that, too.”

Adam tightened his grip on Ronan’s hand just a little. “That’s not something you have to thank me for.”

“I know,” Ronan acknowledged. “But I kind of want to thank you for everything about you, so I’m going to thank you for it anyways.”

Adam watched him for a long moment then, his lips trying to decide if they were going to go all the way to a smile. Ronan was captivated with watching it, like his fate was tied up in Adam Parrish’s lips. Finally, Adam did smile – a brilliant, magical thing – and he said, “Well, Ronan Lynch, thank you for everything about you, too.”


	23. A Different Class of Magic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ronan and Adam leave school for lunch. Adam has negative chill about everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think we're all tired of me apologizing for taking forever and making promises I can't keep... I think this time I will promise to update again by August 10. That sounds very generous to me, and if I don't have another chapter by then, who even knows when I'll have time to update after that?

Ronan held Adam’s hand all the way out to the parking lot. Even through opening doors, through squeezing past the collection of students still in the halls, and through Adam stopping at his locker to grab his pathetic bagged lunch, Ronan held on. Or maybe that was an unfair way to put it – Adam held on to Ronan’s hand, too.

They stopped in front of Ronan’s car, neither of them wanting to let go. There was a lengthy moment that felt comfortingly like a pause, nothing moving but the air. Adam looked over at Ronan, at their fingers tangled together, at –

Adam laughed, sudden and startled. He reached his free hand around his occupied one and pilfered a tube of glitter and water from Ronan’s back pocket. He grinned at Ronan, feeling an awful lot like he’d been given a prize. “Interesting statement, Lynch,” he observed. “I didn’t take you for a fan of glitter.”

Ronan scowled and snatched the wand away. “It’s Noah’s,” he grumbled. “Fucker disappeared like always and left it behind.”

Adam raised an eyebrow. “A likely story,” he teased. “You know, not many people can pull off the glitter wand accessory. I think it’s the shaved head that makes it work.” He reached over again to rub Ronan’s head, and Ronan swatted him away with the toy. It had to look completely ridiculous, Adam realized, them holding hands and Ronan fending him off with a glitter wand. He couldn’t help but laugh.

Ronan’s eyes were narrow as splinters as he tried to use annoyance to mask the embarrassment taking his face by force. “You’re an asshole, did you know that?”

Adam laughed again. He bumped his elbow into Ronan’s and said, “It doesn’t seem like you mind.” Ronan huffed, but in a sort of way that sounded more like surrender than dismissal. Adam smiled to himself and fought against a mysterious urge to lean into Ronan’s shoulder. Reluctantly, he loosened his grip on Ronan’s hand most of the way and started towards the passenger seat. To his surprise, Ronan trailed after him, holding on until Adam got into the car.

Having seen Adam settled into his seat, Ronan nudged the door closed and jogged around to the other side. He slid into the driver’s seat in what had to be the least sexy maneuver ever performed, but somehow, Adam wanted to kiss him. He tried not think about it.

Ronan’s hand went to the gear shift, and Adam felt so unbearably like he wanted to hold it again that he reached over and gave Ronan’s arm a quick squeeze. Ronan looked at him, startled or confused. “What was that for?” he asked.

Adam shrugged, feeling his face go hot. “Don’t crash the car,” he suggested.

Ronan raised an eyebrow like he knew that wasn’t why Adam had done it, but he let it go. “Please, Parrish,” he said, “I am the best fucking driver you’ve ever met.”

Adam smirked. “You know,” he said, “I think I would remember something like that.”

“You’re an asshole,” Ronan told him as he shifted into gear and tore out of the Aglionby parking lot. “I should take you out to the fields and leave you there.”

Adam laughed. His pulse was a rush, some intoxicating mix of the speed Ronan was driving and the satisfaction of getting a rise from him. And maybe a bit just the fact of Ronan himself. Maybe more than a bit. Adam couldn’t imagine a better place to be than Ronan’s passenger seat. This moment was pure perfection, and Adam wanted more of it.

“Gansey would never forgive you,” Adam replied carefully, fully aware that he was toeing his way into quicksand. “In fact, I think the only way you could avoid his wrath is if you left yourself out in the fields with me.”

Ronan glanced over at him with the edges of his eyes. “Are you asking me to run away with you, Parrish?” It was the sort of question that probably was meant to come out teasing, like it was all a joke. It didn’t sound that way.

“Maybe,” Adam said, his smile leaking into his voice. “For a little while, at least.” He looked over at Ronan. “That’s kind of what we’re doing, isn’t it?”

Ronan was doing his best to look unimpressed, but there was amusement folded into the line of his lips. Adam told himself not to stare, but he found himself compelled to watch what happened to it when Ronan spoke. “I’m not sure that spending an hour sitting in a fucking field counts as running away together.”

Adam laughed. He felt so light that he was sure that if Ronan opened a window, he would float right out. “I think I might be able to change your mind on that.”

“Yeah?” Ronan asked, clearly struggling to keep his eyes on the road ahead. “How’s that?”

Adam shrugged, trying not to seem like he was having too much fun. “I have my ways.”

Ronan, to his surprise, laughed. “‘I have my ways?’ Do you hear how you sound right now? Parrish, that has to be the fucking lamest comeback ever!” He shook his head. “Damn, I thought you were better than that.”

Adam felt his face going red. “Fuck you,” he said. “I am amazing, and you know it.”

Ronan tilted his head towards him, a small smirk pulling at his lips. “Sure thing, Parrish. Yeah, I’d better write that down, don’t you think? Seems pretty easy to forget.”

That pretty effectively murdered whatever comfortable atmosphere had developed between them. Adam looked awkwardly out the window. “Yeah,” he said, “right.”

“Oh.” Ronan seemed to just realize what he had said. “I didn’t mean –”

Adam nodded at his reflection. “I know,” he murmured. “It just feels like – I don’t know. It feels so important to remember all of this, you know?” He caught Ronan’s nod in the glass, but neither of them elaborated the point. Adam watched the grass by the side of the road grow tall and unruly, and then Ronan steered into a little half-circle of tire tracks carved into the monotony of it. Adam could see no way to tell if this was the same spot they’d stargazed from last night, but he also didn’t think it particularly mattered which field they ate lunch in.

Ronan turned off the car. Adam wasn’t sure if he was supposed to get out, or – he didn’t know. He sort of wanted to just sit in the car looking at Ronan. He kind of wanted to just hold Ronan’s hand again. He hated that he wasn’t doing either of those things.

“I forgot, for a second,” Ronan said quietly, breaking through the chains of anxiety that were keeping Adam’s attention on the window. “You – it feels normal. It doesn’t feel like this fucked-up thing where I don’t know you past five days ago.”

Adam nodded. “I know,” he agreed. “And then I feel awful for not keeping that in my head all the time, for not thinking to memorize every detail.” He laughed bitterly to himself. “But it wouldn’t even matter if I did, would it? If _whatever_ happens again, it won’t matter. It’ll all just be gone again, and I won’t remember coming out here today, or anything about last night, and I… I want to… remember last night…” Adam trailed off, frowning at Ronan in confusion.

“What?” Ronan asked. “Is – what?”

Adam bit the inside of his lip. “Um.” He hesitated, sure that he was going to sound ridiculous. There was a gap in rationality, though, and no matter what explanation Adam tried to come up with, it didn’t work; he had to ask. “You cut your forehead last night,” he said, “didn’t you?”

Ronan reached up to his forehead automatically, but he stopped his hand a couple inches away. He let out a breath that could have been a laugh, and grinned at Adam. “Yeah, fuck, I forgot,” he said. “It doesn’t even hurt, you know?”

Adam stared at him. “Ronan, it’s not there,” he said. “It’s – you don’t have – where did it go?”

Ronan nodded, looking at least a little embarrassed. “Well, uh, I have these… Band-Aids. I dreamt them, a while ago. A whole box.” He shrugged in a way that seemed like a stall tactic. “They, uh – Fuck it, I can just show you.”

Ronan reached up again, and this time his fingers searched for an edge and found it. Adam watched with wide eyes as Ronan peeled what looked like his actual skin from his forehead. Once Ronan had fully removed it, however, Adam could easily see that it was a simple skin-colored Band-Aid. Adam didn’t think he’d ever seen one that matched a person’s exact skin tone before, but this one had matched Ronan’s perfectly. His brain scrambled to search his memories for the telltale seam of the Band-Aid against Ronan’s skin, but it simply hadn’t been there. He couldn’t entirely make sense of it.

“I think it was three months ago,” Ronan offered. “That I dreamt them, I mean.”

Adam nodded numbly, still trying to process the fact that Ronan had invisible Band-Aids. “Have you – You’ve used them before?” he asked, though he knew the answer had to be yes. Ronan must have known that he knew, too, because all he did was raise an eyebrow. Adam scrambled for more words. “I mean, a lot? Do you use them a lot?”

Ronan looked away. Part of Adam’s brain went, _Ah, got him,_ and the rest of him felt sick with things he was trying not to let himself think. He took a breath to steady himself. “That – last night,” he tried. “How often?”

Ronan sighed. “Adam…”

“No,” Adam insisted. “I want to know. Is it every night? Do you wake up with cuts and bruises every time you sleep?”

Ronan laughed without real humor. “Just how fucked up do you think I am, Parrish?”

Adam was not impressed with his attempt at levity. He took another moment to keep his cool. He thought that this was what defensiveness looked like with Ronan – turning everything into a joke. He reminded himself that it was hard to talk about things that hurt you, even if those things weren’t real. Or maybe that wasn’t the right way to explain it, because Ronan’s nightmares _were_ real – real in a way that Adam couldn’t possibly understand. He’d walked away from his monsters, but Ronan didn’t have that option. Ronan’s monsters were inside his head. There was no picture that Ronan could put together of a time when he didn’t have sleep as a necessary evil in his life.

“How often?” Adam asked again, dread chilling his voice to a whisper. “Tell me. Please.”

Ronan looked pained, torn in half between wanting to share and wanting not to. Without warning, he shoved open his door and ripped himself out of the car. The door slammed behind him, leaving Adam in a space that felt somehow smaller without Ronan in it. He watched Ronan pace with his hands on the back of his head for a minute, and then he got out of the car as well.

“I’m sorry,” Adam said, catching Ronan’s attention. “You don’t have to tell me anything. I didn’t mean to pressure you.”

Ronan shook his head. “I just –” He took a breath. “You already have to worry about so much. I don’t want to turn into another thing you feel like you have to keep an eye on.”

Adam frowned at him. “Well, I’m going to worry about you either way,” he said. “That’s how this works.” There was a beat too long of silence before he clarified, “That’s how friendship works.”

Ronan nodded – somewhat mournfully, Adam thought. “I want to tell you, I think,” he said. “It’s just –” He gestured meaninglessly in frustration.

“I get it,” Adam said, his hand automatically going to Ronan’s arm in a gesture of support. “It’s not easy to talk about something you’ve kept inside for so long. It feels like you’re breaking rules that you’ve already overturned. It sucks.” Ronan sighed, and then there was silence for a long time. They were both, Adam thought, thinking about Adam’s father, how Adam hadn’t told Ronan much himself, but had nudged him into piecing it together. Or maybe that was just Adam, and as usual, the thought felt so oppressive and large that it tricked him into thinking it was in other people’s heads, too.

“I don’t really know how to start,” Ronan said finally.

That was something Adam understood on a level that was almost painful. That constriction around the heart that wouldn’t let words out, that need for someone to just _ask_ , ask the right questions – it was something that Adam had learned again and again throughout his life, and he’d never yet found a remedy. He knew that it was impossible for anyone to know what the right questions to ask were – that Ronan might not even know – but he tried anyways. “What about – I don’t know. How many times a week?” Ronan looked at him, still choking on his words, so Adam repeated an earlier worry. “It’s not – it’s _not_ every night. Is it?”

Ronan shook his head, finally, after a pause that Adam thought his heart was going break under. “It’s like anyone else’s nightmares, I guess,” he said quietly. “Except mine don’t stay just in my head.”

“People don’t all have nightmares in the same amount,” Adam replied, not sure if Ronan just needed more of a push.

Ronan shrugged. He looked miserable, and Adam hoped it was only because he wanted so badly to open up. Finally, he answered Adam’s question in a choked mumble. “It’s usually not more than a couple times a week. If it’s a bad week.” He looked up and found Adam’s eyes. “There are good weeks. Some weeks, there aren’t any nightmares. And, you know. I don’t always bring something back.”

Adam nodded slowly. “Okay,” he said, trying to decide whether he was relieved that it wasn’t quite as bad as he’d built it up to be. There was a little more space in his lungs now. “So, when was the last time? Other than last night, I mean.”

“The last time I had a nightmare, or the last time I brought it back?”

Adam shrugged. “Either. Both. Whichever.”

Ronan opened his mouth to reply, but then he stopped, tilting his head like something was puzzling him. Adam raised an eyebrow, waiting for Ronan to give some hint of what was going on in his head. Finally, he said, “I think… Friday. I didn’t bring anything back, but –”

“But you might have,” Adam filled in.

“I might bring something back any time I go to sleep,” Ronan agreed. “But –” He hesitated, like he wanted to shift the topic, or maybe like he wasn’t sure if he did.

“What?” Adam prompted. “What are you thinking?”

“I don’t know,” Ronan mumbled, looking away over the rippling grass. “I mean, Friday. I think – I don’t know. I don’t remember it. The dream, I mean.”

Adam blinked, uncomprehending until it hit him all of a sudden. “Oh,” he said. “You think… it might have been about me?” Ronan shrugged nonchalantly, but Adam could see that he was actually utterly convinced. He swallowed against the lump in his throat and tried to seem like it hadn’t hurt. His hand slipped from Ronan’s arm. “What, so I’m a nightmare now?”

Ronan shot him a look that tried to pretend they didn’t both know that there was a huge chance of this conversation going wrong. “You’ve always been a nightmare, Parrish.”

Adam laughed at that, surprising himself. “I –” He stopped himself, keeping his tongue from spitting out words he hadn’t thought out. He cleared his throat. “I mean, yeah. Fuck you.”

It was a feeble attempt at pretending normalcy, but Ronan let him get away with it. “Whatever, Parrish,” he muttered, shaking his head.

“So, uh,” Adam asked awkwardly, “was it bad? I mean, I guess you don’t remember that one. But – usually. How does it work?”

Ronan looked away. “How do anyone’s nightmares work?” he said. “Your brain finds some shit that’s been fucking with your head and figures out how to make it worse.”

Adam wasn’t sure that dreams were quite so grounded in reality, but perhaps the rules were different for Ronan. He didn’t want to think about what it was about him that had created a nightmare for Ronan. Instead, he said, “I can’t imagine what it must be like for you. I mean, any time you go to sleep, you could have a nightmare, and wake up with –” He gestured at Ronan’s forehead. “No wonder you don’t ever sleep.” Ronan’s troubles with insomnia had been something Ronan had confided in him last night, though Adam was beginning to realize that they were on an entirely different plane than Gansey’s.

“It’s not always like that,” Ronan offered, a small consolation. “It’s not all that often that I bring something back without meaning to. When I do, it’s not the fucking rule that it has to be awful. Sometimes it’s just a handful of dirt.” He smirked, reaching out without obvious thought to grab Adam’s hand. “One time, I brought back a whole fucking tree. That was fun.”

Adam frowned, not at Ronan’s sarcasm, but at a memory ringing in tune with Ronan’s words: dragging a tree down the stairs from his apartment, tying it to the roof of a car. This car. Maybe earlier, Adam would have thought this memory had to do with Cabeswater, just his own magical mess creating a physical one, but it felt like too large a coincidence. Literally. “That wasn’t in…”

“Your apartment,” Ronan finished in awe. He looked down at where his hand was loosely holding Adam’s as if noticing it for the first time. “Fuck,” he said. “There’s just so much.”

Adam knew what he meant. At times like this, it felt like a person could live an entire lifetime just off of the moments Ronan and Adam had forgotten of each other. It made Adam want to just look at Ronan and keep looking forever. It was all too easy to find Ronan’s eyes, a breath of simplicity like snapping into place. The longer Adam looked, the more he felt like he was being wrapped up in something intangible and inexplicable, so big and important that it could explain every secret in the universe.

Something in Ronan’s expression softened, and he let out a breath that was almost a sigh of contentment. Adam imagined that he breathed some of it in, and he felt at peace, too. The entire universe had shrunk to just the two of them, or maybe they had expanded to take up the space. It felt to Adam like they were orbiting each other, two celestial bodies in an intricate dance. Adam wanted more.

He wanted less space between them. That one step between the ends of his shoes and Ronan’s – he wanted it gone. He wanted to take his hand from Ronan and fall into Ronan’s arms instead. He wanted to lose himself in the folds of Ronan’s wrinkled Aglionby shirt. No, fuck it, he wanted Ronan to take that Aglionby shirt _off._

“Shit,” Ronan said, and Adam started, sure that Ronan somehow knew what he’d been thinking. Embarrassment roasted his entire face. But then Ronan said, “What the fuck did we even come out here for?”

“Oh,” Adam said, disoriented by the sudden reappearance of _context_. The world very quickly became much, much bigger. “I don’t even remember.” It wasn’t a curse or any other form of formal magic that had robbed Adam of this recollection, though. This was a different class of magic – one that existed possibly somewhere in the vicinity of Ronan’s upper lip.

“Shit,” Ronan said again, for emphasis.

Adam thought about it some more. “Well,” he said slowly, tugging a little at Ronan’s hand to punctuate his words. “I think we might have been aiming to get closer, and I think we managed that.”

Ronan snorted. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “You don’t think we meant getting to know each other as opposed to just –” He flicked a wrist at the space between them, demonstrating just how little of it there was by nearly hitting Adam – “physically?”

“I don’t know,” Adam replied, his breath shallow in his lungs. His lips buzzed, a silent melody crying out for Ronan’s skin. “I can’t imagine I would have said no to ‘just physically.’”

Adam thought that Ronan’s eyes must be as wide as they could possibly be. His face was the color of sunburn, and awfully, Adam wondered what it would be like to kiss Ronan in the heavy, hot air of summer. He felt sure that his face was just as red, and he wondered if maybe, just possibly, Ronan could be thinking about the same thing.

“Fu –” Ronan started, then changed his mind. “Shit.”

He hadn’t meant to, but Adam started laughing. It was terrible, because what if Ronan misunderstood and thought Adam had been just been joking all along? Adam’s mouth moved quicker than his brain in trying to fix it. “I l – Fuck. Damn it, I –”

Ronan, to this point just watching, suddenly cracked a grin. Then he started laughing, too. “Parrish, you –” He shook his head and pulled Adam into a half-second, half-hug, the sort that Adam imagined Ronan might give Matthew on light-hearted, after-church Sundays when they were goofing around. Adam hated the comparison, but part of him thought that he would take it if it meant that he got to see Ronan smile like this. Their eyes caught, and suddenly, no one was laughing.

“I kind of want to hug you for real,” Adam confessed, and immediately wished he hadn’t said it.

“Oh,” Ronan said. There was a cavernous pause, and then he said, almost nonchalantly, “You can.”

Adam nodded, trying to swallow his nerves. The thing was, he wasn’t so sure that he wanted to, after all. There was a nagging voice in his head telling him that he somehow wasn’t going to do it right. He wasn’t going to know what to do with his arms, or he was going to hold on too long. He was going to say too much with his body.

“Parrish,” Ronan said, taking Adam’s thoughts from his doubts and his eyes from his shoes. “Come on.” He pulled a little on Adam’s hand. There was something achingly familiar and also achingly new about Ronan’s inviting smile. There were a lot of things that smile could talk him into doing.

“Okay,” Adam relented. He removed the small bit of space that remained between them, and sunk his face into Ronan’s shoulder. His arms curled around Ronan’s torso, and he felt Ronan’s around him. It felt like something in his heart that had been just a little askew had suddenly been righted. There was a kind of security in it, and Adam admitted into Ronan’s shirt, “I’m terrified of forgetting you again.”

Ronan’s arms tightened around him. “Me too,” he said. His voice was soft, and his stubble brushed against Adam’s forehead as he tilted his head. Everything about it was so _much_ , and it was hardly enough. Maybe this had passed the time for a casual, friendly hug, but Adam didn’t really care anymore.

Adam opened his mouth and decidedly did not think about Ronan’s neck so close. The air between them was scented with a million things he wanted to say, but everything that was so desperately trying to claw its way out of Adam’s throat condensed itself into two syllables: “ _Ronan_.”

Another tightening of arms. “I know, Adam.” It came out like a sigh, like a breath Adam could float away on. He wanted Ronan to float away with him.

Then, without warning, Ronan said, “Shit.” He pulled back, and only then did Adam register that Ronan’s pocket was buzzing. Ronan dug into it and pulled out a phone.

“Holy shit,” Adam said, falling into uncontrolled laughter. “You still have Gansey’s phone?”

Ronan shrugged and held out the phone. “It’s Cheng,” he offered.

“You – you want me to answer it?” Adam asked incredulously. He still hadn’t quite gotten control of his laughter.

“Well, I’m not going to!” Ronan replied. Of course he wasn’t; Adam knew that Ronan didn’t answer his own phone, which, if his flat pockets were anything to go by, he didn’t even have with him. There was no universe in which Ronan willingly answered someone else’s phone, especially not to talk to Henry Cheng.

Adam took the phone, trying his best to swallow the last of his laughter. Before he could answer the call, though, it timed out and stopped ringing, and that set him right off again. He couldn’t really explain it, except that it was something about having Ronan around. Humor was on a shelf way above Adam’s head, and Ronan brought it down for him.

Before Adam could fully get control of himself, the phone started ringing again. Henry again. Drunk on a tidal wave of amusement and the memory of Ronan’s body heat, Adam answered the phone still gasping for air that didn’t taste like laughter. “Gansey’s missing phone!”

There was a hesitation, and Adam took the time to take note of the way Ronan was looking at him, like he was something magical and incredible. Maybe it was just ego. But even if it was, Adam wanted to keep it with him forever. In his ear, Gansey said, “Adam?”

Adam coughed to clear his brain. “Yeah, Gansey, hey.” He tried to remember when he had stopped laughing, and came up blank.

“Um, yes, well, I would very much like my phone back at some point,” Gansey said.

Ronan must have caught his words, or else guessed what they were, because he called into the phone, “Calm your tits, Gansey! Cheng has the Maggot’s number!” He gave Adam a quick tap on the bicep with the back of his hand, and then Adam watched him hoist himself up onto the hood of the BMW. Adam poked at his foot once he was settled, and Ronan nudged his hand back.

“Like Gansey doesn’t have Blue’s number memorized,” Adam said to Ronan, but probably loud enough for Gansey to hear.

Ronan snorted. “True,” he agreed.

“Guys, please?” Gansey put in.

“Yeah, we can get you your phone when we get back,” Adam told him.

Another hesitation. Curiosity obviously won, though, because Gansey asked at length, “Where are you guys?”

“Off campus,” Adam said ambiguously. He didn’t know how to say to Gansey that they were in the middle of a field, and he certainly didn’t want to explain the significance of it. It wasn’t that he was ashamed of whatever was going on between him and Ronan, but that it felt so private and intense between just the two of them, and he didn’t want to break it up into pieces for anyone else to look at.

“Okay?” Gansey said uncertainly.

“Anyways, I’ll get your phone to you later today,” Adam said. Ronan’s shoe poked at his side, and Adam squeezed it even as he shot a look at Ronan. “Okay, Gansey, talk to you later.”

“Oh, but Adam –” Gansey started, but Adam heard no more of it, because Ronan leaned forward, grabbed the phone, and hung up on him.

“He might call back,” Adam pointed out. Ronan grinned devilishly, and Adam turned serious on instinct. “Ronan Lynch, if you throw that phone, I swear to god –”

Ronan made a face and shoved the phone back into Adam’s hands. “Fun-killer,” he muttered, though it was clear he wasn’t serious about it.

Adam took the phone back to the car and left it on the passenger seat. “Food?” he suggested to Ronan, already grabbing his own lunch.

“Shit, yes,” Ronan agreed, hopping off the hood and coming around to fish a bag of chips out of the back seat.

Adam rolled his eyes at the fact that, for once, he was the one with the healthier lunch. He said, “Headline: Rich Boy Dies of Malnutrition.”

Ronan flipped him off. “Fuck you, Parrish,” he said, hopping back onto the hood. “This fucking bag of chips satisfies all the major food groups.” He listed them off on his fingers. “Potatoes, oil, and fucking barbeque sauce.”

“Mmhm,” Adam said. He was hovering at the hood, trying to decide if the dust on Ronan’s car or the potential grass stains were more perilous to his uniform. “Yeah, none of those are food groups.”

Ronan threw a chip at him. “That’s what they want you to think.”

Adam picked the chip gingerly from the grass and threw it back at Ronan, bouncing it off of the side of his jaw. “Conspiracy theorist.”

Another chip hit Adam in the chest. “Government yes-man.” The moment was so very _Ronan_ , and so very _Adam wanting to kiss Ronan_ that Adam started laughing again. Before he knew it, he and Ronan were engaged in an all-out chip war, and then they were out of chips and Adam didn’t like the look of that grin forming on Ronan’s face. Preemptively, he threw out all logic and sense and ran right at Ronan, knocking them both to the grass.

“Shit, Parrish!” Ronan exclaimed, sprawled out half underneath him. Adam was laughing again. He didn’t think there’d ever been a day that he’d laughed more. He rolled off of Ronan, and they laughed together at the blades of grass between them.

When they’d settled down and the only sound was that of the field around them, Adam reached out his hand. Between blades of grass, he watched Ronan’s lips curve into a soft smile. And Ronan took his hand.


	24. Prior to the Punchline

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blue comes to the garage to talk to Adam while he works.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I missed that deadline I gave myself - I know, I'm shocked, too. But, to be fair, I had this written by then; I just had a hundred things to fix in it. So, hey, finally we have another chapter! Welcome back, and thank you for your patience!

“I don’t even know how long we just laid there,” Adam was saying. “Just holding hands. It could have been forever.” He laughed a little. “I think Ronan might have gotten sunburned. Anyways, I wound up just eating my lunch on the way back.”

“Hmm,” Blue commented. She had installed herself on top of the workbench when she came in, and was now fiddling with a wrench. She was trying to play it cool, trying to hide the one million things she was thinking. She didn’t want it to be obvious that she was assigning so much significance to this, and she certainly didn’t want it to be obvious that’s she’d also had a significant conversation with Gansey earlier in the day. She looked at Adam and found him looking at her, waiting for her assessment. “So, are you two… dating or something now?”

Adam’s face went red. “I don’t know,” he said, his defenses and his shoulders high. “No. Maybe. No.”

Blue arched an eyebrow, and Adam sighed. “We haven’t said anything like that. We’re just –”

“What?” Blue cut in. “Two bros who occasionally hold hands, like hashtag-straight guys do?”

Adam shot her a look. “Nobody said anything about anyone being straight,” he grumbled. “And anyways, don’t we have to go on dates to be dating? Don’t we have to actually discuss it?”

“So, discuss it!” Blue urged, choosing to ignore the easy jab that they clearly _had_ been on dates, whether they’d used the word or not. “Adam, come on! Things shouldn’t be this complicated! Do you want to date him or don’t you?”

The look on Adam’s face was indecipherable. He held it for a moment, like Blue was supposed to get anything from that, and then he turned away and pressed both wrists to his forehead, probably trying and failing to avoid smudging himself with engine grease. “It _is_ that complicated, Blue,” he said. “I’ve known him less than a week! Or it feels that way! There’s just so much I don’t know.”

Blue slid off the work bench and walked over to him, hovering just to his side. “Do you trust him?” she asked. Adam stared at her like he couldn’t imagine why she was asking him that. She repeated the question. “Do you trust Ronan?”

“Yes,” Adam said, hollow and startled. His face played host to a determined expression. “Of course I do.”

“I think that should be enough,” Blue told him. “You’re not someone who randomly trusts a person after knowing him for five days.”

Adam didn’t bother to answer; Blue knew that he didn’t have a rebuttal to that. Adam was a good guy, and he was the sort of person who quickly _wanted_ to trust someone. Blue couldn’t say that she completely understood his typical hesitation in _actually_ trusting people, but she knew where it came from, and she knew that it couldn’t be dismissed so easily. She knew that he was perpetually uncomfortable with being vulnerable in front of others. Even with Blue, even with Gansey, he sometimes had trouble saying what was on his mind, like he didn’t want to admit that he could be bothered. Blue didn’t know if he’d still had that same problem when he was talking to Ronan, before the memory erasure; Ronan hadn’t really shared that sort of thing.

“You know a lot more about Ronan than you think,” Blue added. “You’ve been saying it, haven’t you? It’s all still there, underneath. You know him.”

“If you tell me that I know he has a good heart,” Adam warned, but he didn’t finish his statement. He just shook his head.

“I don’t think I have to tell you what you know,” Blue said gently, wrapping her fingers around his arm in support. “I’ll tell you what _I_ know, though.” Adam nodded for her to go on. “I know,” she said, “that Ronan has a good heart.”

Adam laughed in one short breath. He ground his free wrist into his forehead again. “Thanks. That’s very helpful.”

Blue dug her fingernails just the barest bit into Adam’s arm. “I know that Ronan cares about you,” she continued. “I know that he wouldn’t hold hands with just anyone. I know that you like him.”

Adam sighed. “I don’t know if it should mean anything.”

“Should?” Blue repeated. “Are you talking about, what? In the grand scheme of the universe? I have news for you, Adam: for the most part, the universe doesn’t care. Do you know when the universe cares? When it’s mucking things up for you. When it’s deciding to erase your memory, or it’s telling you that you can’t kiss people, or it’s telling you that people are going to die –” She stopped. Blue knew better than this – both blaming the universe for her problems, and lamenting it. Things happened for a reason, usually, and sometimes those reasons were arbitrarily stupid and had nothing to do with you, but that didn’t mean that you should believe that there was some force out there that had decided that what you needed today was to rip your tights. As far as Blue knew, there had never been a recorded case of blame and anger making a situation better. Also, Adam looked like he was actually about to let her make this conversation about herself.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know a lot of this is hard for you.”

“What’s hard for me,” Blue said firmly, “is knowing that you and Ronan are having a hard time. I can’t even imagine – Adam, I can’t even _imagine_ forgetting one of you. I can’t imagine what you’re going through. And I know it’s confusing, and scary, and you don’t know what’s going on with your emotions, but – You like him. You like Ronan. Why can’t you just tell him to his face that you like holding his hand?”

Adam bit his lip. “Do I – is that really something I’m supposed to _say_?”

Blue threw up her hands, mostly for the theatrics. “Who cares about ‘should’ and ‘supposed to?’” she demanded. “Those are guidelines, and we’re not the ones making them. Do you think any of us would be friends, would be seeing the amazing things we’ve seen, if we had stopped and done what the so-called reasonable people say we should? None of us are listening to ‘supposed to,’ Adam!” She crossed her arms. “And you know what? Besides all that, when you feel about someone the way that you feel about Ronan, you _should_ tell them!” She nodded decisively; _so, there._

Adam stared at her. “I, um, I’m not sure that last part is consistent with the rest of it…”

Blue scowled at him; she did not appreciate having that pointed out. “I said ‘besides all that,’ didn’t I?” she replied crossly.

“Well, sure,” Adam hedged. “But I think I’m a little unclear on which part I’m supposed to follow. Is it –”

“Oh, for god’s sake, Adam!” Blue complained. “Pick one, then! Just _talk to Ronan!_ That’s the whole point I’m trying to make!”

Adam scrunched up his nose. “It sounds like an awkward conversation,” he noted.

Blue was exasperated. “ _This_ is an awkward conversation,” she grumbled.

“I think you’re confusing ‘awkward’ with ‘aggravating,’” Adam replied. “You seem aggravated.”

Blue gave him her best Calla-level stink-eye, which wasn’t actually very close to Calla’s level of flattening derision. Luckily, she also had Blue-level sharp words, and those didn’t need to measure to anyone else. She snapped, “And whose fault do you think that is?”

Adam, god knows why, seemed to find that funny. He had this quiet, amused smile that he was trying to hide in his shoulder. It reminded Blue, for a brief instant, of when she’d first met him, and it took her a minute to understand why: as he had then, Adam was making himself quiet for her. He’d picked out the pieces of himself that he didn’t think she’d like, and he was trying to keep them inside. He didn’t realize that Blue loved him in his entirety. He tried to put himself into a nicer package, but Blue thought that he would look better in a box that fit him. She was sorry that he ever felt he had to put away his emotions. She kept quiet so that he could feel them.

“I don’t know how to say it,” Adam confided eventually, going back to their previous topic.

“Oh,” Blue said sympathetically. Truthfully, she didn’t have much experience in speaking feelings, either. Maybe Adam had been onto something earlier, when he’d wondered if this was something he should have to say; it was always so much better, Blue thought, when it felt like the other person just knew what you were thinking. Those were beautiful moments with Gansey, standing in the dark and thinking, _I don’t think I’d mind if he brushed back my hair,_ only seconds before he reached up and did it. Adam had had that with Ronan, she’d thought, and maybe he still did; maybe they were both second-guessing, but maybe Ronan already knew what Adam wanted him to.

Adam sighed. He looked uncomfortable to even have said anything. His eyes went to the other end of the room, and his feet soon followed. Blue trailed after him, into the cramped break room. It was a room that only seemed cramped because someone had tried to force both a scratched round table and a sagging red couch inside alongside the counter and fridge; if they’d just chosen one, it wouldn’t have felt like this room could only accommodate half a person at time.

Adam was clearly more used to the space than Blue, because he easily maneuvered the negligible space between the table and the window out to the shop, without even disturbing the blinds. He leaned into the fridge and extracted a half-empty bottled water, worn and almost acquitted of the dirt it had picked up on the adhesive where the label used to be. If Blue had caught Gansey with a plastic water bottle, she would have lectured him to no end about the ramifications for the planet, but she knew that Adam got a lot more use from a single water bottle than most. And if she’d had Gansey’s money, she thought that she would have already offered to buy Adam a water bottle that was built to be reused.

“You can check if there’s anything in there that you want,” Adam told her, studiously fiddling with his bottle cap. “I would check the expiration date on anything you find, though.”

Blue hesitated. “Don’t those things belong to people?”

Adam shrugged. “Not if there isn’t a name on it,” he said. He was carefully avoiding eye contact, which puzzled Blue even more. She couldn’t quite imagine Adam allowing himself to take other people’s food, unlabeled or not. Then she realized: _Adam_ probably couldn’t imagine Adam doing that, either.

“Does Ronan…?”

Adam looked up, frowning. “I don’t know,” he said. “I think… I think it’s a game, maybe. He takes something, but he puts something else in? I think it’s turned into a competition.” He snorted. “I probably accused him of flirting with my coworkers behind my back.”

Blue tilted her head. “Are you… remembering that?” she asked, trying to keep her hopes clamped down.

“No,” Adam replied. “I don’t think so. It was just – the thought to say that kind of popped up in my head. It was _like_ a memory, sort of. But like a memory that you forgot and somebody had to remind you that it happened, but once they do, it’s like, ‘Yeah, that sounds real.’ Does that make any sense?”

Blue pondered it. “Yeah, that sounds real,” she decided, and it was nice to remember that she could still make Adam smile, even with all this nonsense going on.

“Okay,” he said, “I should get back out there.” He gestured to the fridge with his water bottle. “Seriously, take a look if you want. Or there are cups in the cabinet, if you want some water.”

“Sure,” Blue said, though she very much doubted that she was going to take anything from the fridge. “Thanks,” she said anyways. Adam flashed her a small smile and squeezed back past the table to exit to the work area, letting the door swing shut behind him.

For a moment after he’d gone, Blue just stood there with her hands on her hips. Partially, she was appraising the table situation, because she did not particularly want to injure herself on any more unfortunately-placed furniture this week. Partially, she was appraising the Adam situation, because she was not sure that she wanted to impale herself on any more hope this week. She was starting to feel burnt out on this conversation; she’d thought that she’d be able to say “Talk to Adam, Talk to Ronan” until her voice gave out, but she was running out of ways to say it. Blue was finding that she didn’t much like having to repeat herself, and she was sure that she would like it even less if she was doing it literally.

Blue sighed in surrender and finally scooted around the table – luckily, injury-free. She had to admit, too, that she truly didn’t like being told what to do. It was all plenty fun when she wasn’t supposed to be interfering, when she was finding clever ways around that directive, but now… Well, there just wasn’t any challenge to saying the same thing again and again. And no matter what Gansey said, she was _not_ going to change that plan. She’d left before finding out if he had changed his mind about keeping Adam and Ronan in the dark, but she knew that Calla and Maura hadn’t, so Blue was going to go by that.

All right, Blue was scared. Not scared of what was in front of her, physically, because that was a rotting banana, half a block of cheese, a peanut butter sandwich, and an expired yogurt – though, she _was_ concerned for whichever person had let a perfectly go yogurt go to waste. No, Blue was afraid of what was ahead, metaphorically. She was afraid that she was going to make things worse with Adam and Ronan. She was afraid that she was standing in a minefield, and any step she made could have catastrophic consequences.

It suddenly felt so real, and she realized that it was just Gansey’s reversal making her feel this way, but Blue couldn’t imagine how anyone could think that it definitely would be okay, that Ronan and Adam could survive the meddling. She should have been elated that Gansey was finally agreeing with her, that they needed to get Adam and Ronan back to where they’d been, with or without their memories. Instead, it was like she and Gansey had reversed positions, because Blue was so, so aware of what Adam and Ronan had to lose.

It was all still ringing in her head, too. With dizzying clarity, she remembered the excitement in Gansey’s voice on the phone this morning. She remembered his polar-opposite exhaustion and lethargy when they’d met after school. Most of all, she remembered the exact shape of his voice as he’d said, “I think we should get Ronan and Adam together.”

It had been stunning in the moment, and still nonsensical in the aftermath. Gansey, perpetual advocate for playing it safe, wanted to interfere in their friends’ lives in the most intimate way possible. Well, more specifically, he wanted _her_ to interfere. Because, Gansey had claimed, he had no idea how to make people fall in love. Blue had wanted to argue with that – especially because, in her opinion, there was no need for interference in the falling-in-love part, but there was an unfortunate abundance of room for it in the communication part of the whole thing. Gansey, for all the sentences he’d managed to speak directly into Blue’s heart, was not to be trusted with something as delicate as saying the right thing when the stakes were high.

Of course, Blue didn’t exactly trust herself with that, either. Not when it was Ronan and Adam. As much as she loved them, neither Ronan nor Adam were great at taking advice. They could both get defensive, albeit in different ways, if they were being told what to do. Well, Blue could get defensive about being told what she could or should or might do, too, which was pretty much why she’d stomped away from Gansey when he’d asked her to do this.

She was thinking about it, though. She’d come here, and she’d seen how much Adam was struggling with this. She’d given him advice and he hadn’t closed himself off over it, which was a pretty good indication that he’d already come to the same conclusion and had only wanted to hear the idea from someone else’s mouth. She’d seen the wistful look on Adam’s face, and on Ronan’s. It put her in an odd position. She hadn’t been the confidant for either of them the first time Adam and Ronan had gotten together, so she didn’t know what she would have done then. Now, it felt like she’d been handed an old test, one she’d already studied the answer key to. It wasn’t even temptation; it was having an answer that she shouldn’t, trying to convince herself that she would have come up with it on her own. She knew that Adam and Ronan could date, could love each other, because they’d done it already, but it just didn’t feel fair to use that information.

But there was so much more to consider here, and Blue knew that. Now that she’d taken some time to cool down, she had to admit that Gansey hadn’t been speaking on a whim. He’d explained to her what he’d been thinking, prior to the punchline. It had started, he’d said, with last night. He’d gone to bed early – of course he had – but sleep had been hard to grasp. He’d been nearly asleep, almost asleep, but his brain had been reluctant to commit to it. In this indecision, his thoughts had been dreamlike, strange, but malleable: Gansey had had some say. Like the dreaming in Cabeswater, Gansey had explained: you think that the fish should be red, and the fish become red.

Really, he needn’t have explained; Blue was familiar with the concept of lucid dreaming, if not the practice of it. The important part came in the specifics: Gansey had dreamt of a wedding. He’d dreamt himself and Blue at the altar, and (he’d been embarrassed to say this) he’d thought that this couldn’t possibly be their wedding, because there could be no kiss. And immediately, it had become Adam and Ronan’s wedding. They’d been so happy, Gansey had said. So, so happy, and it had made him, when he’d managed full consciousness, feel so fully the magnitude of difference between now and a week ago. Adam and Ronan a week ago had been so happy together, he’d pointed out. And last night, Ronan had come in and woken Gansey from his lucid dream, and he’d spent the rest of the hours meant for sleep in a state of frustration.

Blue understood this, though. She understood that Ronan had been confused and afraid of what to do with his emotions. She understood that Gansey had been kept awake for hours, and he’d used that time to reevaluate everything that he felt about Ronan and Adam. Blue also suspected that Gansey had used many of these hours to read his library books, and had gotten nowhere with them.

When he’d called her, Gansey had been filled with the counterfeit energy of sleep deprivation and the pure elation that came from making a decision final. He’d been filled with a false certainty that his plan would work, and Blue was sure that it was only a function of his soon-following exhaustion that he hadn’t doubted it in the hours since. Or maybe he doubted it; maybe he’d gone back and forth, and decided that he still liked it better than the alternative.

It was still terrifying to Blue. It was one thing to tease and hint to Adam and Ronan that they should talk to each other about their feelings, but it was another entirely to actively conspire to get them together. Blue had been giving little nudges, taps; Adam and Ronan had taken no steps forward that she had fully forced them into. What Gansey was asking for, it seemed, were shoves. Blue, at five feet tall, was not used to making the choice to resort to shoves.

She couldn’t think about this anymore. It was too much – far too much. Blue gave up on the kitchen; there was nothing worth taking from the fridge, and she didn’t fully trust the concept of cups in a kitchen with no visible dish soap. Back around the table she went, feeling rather proud of herself for managing it twice with no bruises, and she head for the door. She stopped.

Blue had been so busy thinking about Gansey and the discussion she’d had with him that she hadn’t noticed the sound of voices in the garage until now. It was hard to be sure, with the door closed, but – was that Ronan?

Blue crept forward and eased the door open. She opened it all the way, just to make herself feel like she wasn’t outright spying. Which she wasn’t. Adam knew that she was here, and she was in plain view now. The fact that she didn’t announce herself was more to do with not wanting to interrupt, and less to do with wanting to know what it was that she wasn’t interrupting. Really, if you put all the facts together, Blue was being downright polite about it all. Though, that assessment didn’t actually make her feel too much better about leaning against a door frame and watching Ronan and Adam’s conversation.

It was this: Adam holding his body loose against the work bench, Ronan’s sneakers hugging his. They were quiet, now, but everything about their postures suggested that whatever Adam had just said had been witty and sharp, and Ronan had liked it; Blue had seen the whole sequence played before. This was, typically, the part where one or the other of them tipped his head in just that smallest bit closer, and they kissed.

They did not kiss. Adam turned his head to the side, a fatal blow to an atmosphere not-quite-invisible. “I’ll need to be back to work,” Adam said. It wasn’t quite a full-stop halt, Blue realized, but an opening that Adam was prying in his defenses. He couldn’t just lean into a kiss, because he was Adam, but he was giving Ronan the room to work towards one.

Ronan stepped back. “Which one?” he asked, looking around at the cars sitting in the garage.

Adam considered for a moment, then gestured to a silver minivan. “Don’t make a face,” he warned as Ronan’s lip curled. “Not everyone can drive a pretty, pretty BMW.”

A nicer version of a smirk played at Ronan’s lips as he stalked toward the minivan. “I didn’t realize you were such a fan of my car, Parrish,” he commented.

“I would be,” Adam replied, “except that you’re usually with it.”

“Rude,” Ronan said, hopping up onto the hood of the minivan. “You know, I was totally going to give you that car when I was done with it, but now?” He shook his head.

“Liar,” Adam accused. He stepped close enough to Ronan that his knees were brushing the van’s bumper.

“No, no,” Ronan joked. “Really. You know, I figured I would wait a few years, break some shit, maybe fuck up the paint job a bit. Just so it isn’t as huge a culture shock for you, coming from that glorified scrap metal you drive now.”

They were leaning into each other again, both of them looking mirthful and amused. Again, one of them should have turned this into a kiss, but Adam just nudged Ronan’s shoe and stepped back. “I’m going to have to open that,” he said, nodding to the hood. His voice was hoarse; he cleared his throat and turned back to the workbench to retrieve his water.

As soon as Adam’s back was turned, Ronan scrambled up the windshield of the car and laid down across the roof, hanging his head and half his back down the driver’s side window. Adam turned back and put his hands on his hips. “You do know that I’m meant to leave these cars in _better_ condition,” he commented.

Ronan’s smirk, incredibly, was even sharper upside-down. “Don’t even tell me that you haven’t had dreams like this,” he said. Blue started to wonder if there was a way for her to get out of here without being noticed.

Adam crossed the room to Ronan, stopping about a foot from him. “You have a very active imagination,” he said. He poked his index finger into the tip of Ronan’s nose, for absolutely no reason that Blue could discern. “Come on,” Adam said, “get off of there.”

Ronan sighed dramatically. He flailed his arms a bit as he attempted what looked like some version of a sit-up, with Adam hurriedly supporting his back so that he wouldn’t fall over – in her head, Blue decided to blame private schooling for the failure of Ronan’s physical education.

Now sitting atop the car roof, Ronan grinned across his shoulder at Adam, and immediately treated the windshield like the world’s most awkward slide. He came to a stop at the juncture of the windshield and hood, and swung his legs over the side of the car. “You can’t tell me that didn’t impress you,” he said.

“No, you’re right,” Adam agreed, “I’m very impressed. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve seen a worse stunt in my life. You could put that on YouTube and get a thousand hits for sheer pity.”

Ronan scoffed. “Please. I could get a thousand hits in my sleep.”

“See, that would have made that whole thing interesting,” Adam retorted. “I would watch that.”

“You like watching me sleep, Parrish?” Ronan said with a grin. “That’s kind of creepy.”

Adam shrugged. “It would probably look better than what you just did,” he replied.

“What do you want?” Ronan challenged. “What, you want me to jump off the roof?” He drew one leg back up onto the hood, like he was preparing to climb back up.

“No!” Adam protested, laughing. Blue recognized that laugh, pure and unfiltered, from about thirty seconds before the time she’d walked in on Adam and Ronan making out. “God,” Adam said, “do that shit with your own car!”

Ronan shrugged. “Been there, done that,” he muttered. He did stand up on the hood, though, before hopping down to the garage floor. Blue was admittedly impressed with his landing.  
Adam shook his head with amusement. He didn’t look impressed, but he’d probably seen it before. Wait. No, he probably hadn’t, because he’d forgotten. It was misleading, how much this looked like Ronan and Adam before – though, Ronan and Adam before might have been more productive with their flirting. Blue had forgotten, just for a moment, that things were different now.

“You are a hazard,” Adam told Ronan. “You really think that I let you hang out here? How have I not been fired over the things you’ve broken?”

Ronan hopped up onto the hood of the next car over, looking completely at ease. “And what exactly have I broken, Parrish?”

Adam scowled at him. “I don’t remember,” he grumbled, “but I’m sure there was something.”

Ronan lounged back against the windshield, his arms propping up his head. “Maybe I’m just that good.”

“No,” Adam scoffed. “That can’t be it.”

Ronan sat forward again. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll prove it. Give me a stunt, anything, and I’ll – Sargent!”

 _Oops._ Blue had only been trying to fix her hair clip – it had started slipping – but apparently, that was enough motion for Ronan to spot her. And now, Adam was peering across the room at her, too. “Shit,” he said. “Blue, I –”

“Forgot I was here?” she filled in. Everything about her body language, she hoped, said that it didn’t bother her. “I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“How long have you been there?” Ronan demanded.

“Here in the building, or here in the doorway?” Blue asked.

“It’s fine. No big deal,” Adam said quickly, though he looked a little unsettled. He was likely trying to subvert the argument that Ronan wanted to start.

Blue felt guilty, though. It had been too easy to stand there and listen – kind of illicitly exciting, even. And the longer she’d stood there, the more impossible announcing herself had seemed – but that wasn’t much of an excuse. These were Adam and Ronan’s lives, their words that they hadn’t asked her to hear. What she’d done was sort of, she thought randomly, like being a psychic: intruding on other people’s experiences without permission. That was never what Blue had wanted to do.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have said something. You guys were just –”

“It’s fine,” Adam said again, interrupting her. “It’s not like – well, I did invite you here.”

Ronan crossed his arms. Blue wasn’t sure if she was imagining it, but he almost looked defensive. He said to Adam, “You invited her?”

“Oh,” Adam said, turning red. “Yeah, but – Well, we were just talking about –”

“Cabeswater,” Blue lied for him. “I was wondering if Adam had been since… you know.” Both she and Ronan looked to Adam expectantly.

“Right,” he said slowly. “Um, yeah. No, I haven’t. I’ve been a little busy.”

“Oh,” Ronan said. Blue thought that he was probably thinking the same thing she was: that it would make sense for Adam to hesitate in visiting the magical place that seemed to be aware of so many of their problems. With this latest issue piled on, a sentient copse of cryptic trees seemed just a little less inviting.

“Mind if I tag along when you go?” Ronan asked before Blue could offer the same thing. “I’ve got a few questions of my own I want to ask.”

Adam smiled, just faintly. The thing was, everyone in the room knew that Ronan was not offering to accompany Adam for his own gain. And yet, they all pretended.

“I was thinking about after school Friday,” Adam said, “if you’re free.”

Ronan shrugged. “I think I can swing that.”

There was a moment, then, where Blue wondered if she ought to offer to go along as well, just for the sake of politeness. She was pretty sure that all of them would be better pleased with the result if it were just Ronan and Adam, but it felt kind of awkward to just be standing here while they were making plans. Although, as the seconds fell away, it was becoming harder for Blue to consider moving her jaw.

Then the phone on the wall started ringing, startling all three of them. Too slowly, Noah began taking shape beside it. “Blue!” His voice was the memory of an echo. In between blinks, Blue realized that he had his hand on the phone, as if he was about to answer it. He was almost all the way in the room when he said, “Oops.” And then he was gone.


	25. This New Peace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gansey has some important conversations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there. Long wait between chapters again, me putting off editing again. Anyways, happy holidays! I suppose I'll see you all again in 2018. Meanwhile...
> 
>  
> 
> **FIC NEWS:**
> 
>   * You should all see [this](http://klainederful.tumblr.com/post/165549221459) wonderful edit for this fic that my wonderful friend made for me. <3
>   * I wrote [this](https://dysfunctional-college-roommates.tumblr.com/post/167751035347/number-19) little excerpt that kind of goes with this chapter.
>   * I decided I was going to write a piece of the past to celebrate this fic reaching 10,000 hits, because I'm a nerd like that. But then I lost all sense of urgency when it actually happened, so... I'll get around to it, and I'll let you know when it happens.
> 


Moonlight or streetlights filtered in through the wide windows of Monmouth Manufacturing, illuminating the edge of the couch and creating shadows along the far wall. In the middle of the room, a table lamp, sitting on the floor with an extension cord for a tail, lit what the outside world could not. In its circle of warm, yellow light, Gansey sat with his model of Henrietta.

With the practiced care of a professional, Gansey swiped the glue brush along the edge of a tiny rooftop. He was trying his best to concentrate on his hands. He knew, from unfortunate experience, that glue plus exhaustion could be a treacherous combination culminating in his hand stuck somewhere he didn’t want to keep it. Like his pocket or the floor.

Gansey managed to attach at least this rooftop without incident. His eyes ached from the strain of peering down at the small pieces of his cardboard town, and his mind was frustratingly empty – not peaceful, but overall incapable of forming useful thoughts. He knew, objectively, that he should probably retire this project for the evening, that he probably shouldn’t have even picked it up. But he also knew, pessimistically, that trying to sleep now would get him nowhere. Perhaps there was nothing for him to think about in the moment, as he avoided the anxiety of attempting sleep, but the second he laid down, he knew that his brain would start sabotaging him again. It was a vicious pattern.

Perhaps Gansey was just being too negative. Exhaustion would win, eventually, and it would probably be better for him overall if that happened somewhere other than the floor. It was just that he’d already spent a significant portion of his afternoon attempting a nap, and it had not gone any better than he’d expected. He wasn’t sure that he could believe that his mind would give him any more peace just because the sky was darker. On days like today, with so many thoughts poised to needle at his neurons, he wasn’t sure that he believed at all in sleep that was not impossibly won.

The problem was, it wasn’t only the significant things that kept Gansey awake on days like today. Of course he was going to think about Blue, about the way that she’d stomped out, the way that she’d been so unconvinced by his words. Of course he was going to think about Adam and Ronan, about the doubts that they wore like chains, like magnets, pushing and pulling in turn. These were the big things, the things that wore out his synapses. The things that would keep him up on other nights. But there were other things, too, for when his brain ran out of words for the big ones. There were a hundred other things. A thousand.

Earlier today, staring at the ceiling high above his bed, his eyes tracing the beams, Gansey had thought about the school cafeteria. He’d wondered what they did with their leftovers, if that was something he should bring up with Henry. He’d wondered if the workers brought their own lunches instead of eating Aglionby’s. He’d wondered if teachers were ever truly fired for taking the occasional supply – a whiteboard marker brought home, or a ream of paper.

He’d wondered about the sky, about the colors of the impending sunset. He’d wondered if any two people ever saw it exactly the same, or if there were minute differences even in standing two feet apart. He’d thought about how no two people see the world exactly the same, either. About how Blue wanted to travel, and Gansey wanted to stay. He’d wondered if, just because Henrietta was such a lovely cradle for so many pieces of his soul, he should stop looking for places that would soothe parts of him that he hadn’t noticed yet. He’d wondered if that feeling of _yes_ as he’d stepped foot in this town for the first time was something that only happened once, if it was independent of age, if it was waiting for him somewhere again. He’d ached with the fact that he wasn’t currently exploring every inch of the world, that he would never see every bit of magic out there. He didn’t know what his life would be if he ever stopped seeking the impossible, and how could he seek it all if he was glued to Henrietta? Could he be both restful and purposeful? Was such a thing achievable?

Gansey rubbed his eye under his glasses, careful to use the heel of his hand. He would hate to have to explain to some poor emergency room doctor how he’d glued his eye shut. Blue would surely never let him hear the end of that one.

Downstairs, an angry scraping of tires announced the arrival of Ronan Lynch. This evening, it was an extra-long tire squeal, which likely did not bode well for Gansey’s chances of having a full night’s sleep tonight. He replaced the cap on his bottle of glue and listened as Ronan stomped his way up the stairs. The racket culminated with him throwing open the door and slamming it behind him. Then slamming it again for good measure.

“Have a nice evening?” Gansey asked rhetorically as he scratched at a smear of dried glue along the side of his index finger.

Ronan glowered at him. “I need a beer,” he grumbled, stomping off towards the fridge. Gansey rolled his eyes, but before his tired brain could think of a good deterrent for Ronan’s drinking, Ronan was back with a diet soda. In spite of himself, Gansey frowned at this – first, because he hadn’t realized that they’d had any soda, but also because he’d seen Ronan go for a soda and come back with a beer, but never the other way around.

“The caffeine will keep you up,” Gansey said, because this was the only concern he knew how to voice. Ronan always seemed so unaffected by losing sleep, but Gansey himself didn’t think he could take another night awake.

“Fuck sleep,” Ronan replied, which was a perfectly insolent, perfectly Ronan thing to say. It gave Gansey a headache.

“Did something happen?” he asked outright. “Was it something with Adam?”

Ronan looked offended at his bluntness, but it couldn’t be helped; Gansey didn’t trust his energy or his patience to last through a conversation of skirting around the topic tonight. “No, man,” Ronan said. “It was –” He swung out the arm with which he was holding his soda, but magically, effortlessly, managed not to spill any. “Fuck all this shit, Gansey. When did our lives get so fucking complicated?”

Gansey frowned. The thing was, their lives were complicated in many ways at the moment, and Gansey wasn’t sure which part was bothering Ronan right now. And the other thing was, Gansey couldn’t fathom a life that _wasn’t_ this complicated. It was like all the intricacies and the questions had been there all along, a silent part of him, long before he’d ever known it. Life was too tedious when it was simple.

Gansey didn’t realize how long he’d been mulling that over until Ronan scuffed his shoe across the floor and muttered, “Noah stopped by. For a couple seconds.” He didn’t look at Gansey as he said it.

“Oh?” Gansey wasn’t sure he was following this conversation. “Did he say something?”

Ronan did turn to Gansey now, and his face was desperate and devastated. “No! He wasn’t there long enough!”

For all that he’d tried, Gansey had yet to understand how to help the unreliability of Noah’s current state, which meant that he didn’t have a clue how to address it when it came up. He had no solutions, no paths of investigation to follow. All that he had was a feeling of hopelessness and overwhelming dread when he thought about it, which seemed fitting, for a topic so twined with death.

Still, Ronan was expecting something from him, and perhaps Gansey couldn’t be helpful, but he could be more than mute. And perhaps all that he had were pointless questions, but sometimes that was all Ronan was looking for. So, he said, “I take it he didn’t come back?”

Ronan shook his head. He looked miserable about it. “Adam –” he said, but stopped the words in his throat. He tried again, “Adam said he’d keep an eye out.” Maybe it was Gansey’s imagination, but it sounded like this second sentence wasn’t the same one that Ronan had planned to lead with.

“So, Adam was with you, when Noah appeared,” Gansey clarified.

Ronan shrugged. “It was at the garage,” he muttered. He looked oddly guilty, as if he felt that he’d done something he shouldn’t. Really, it was quite the opposite. As far as Gansey was concerned, the more time that Adam and Ronan spent together could only be for the better right now. Either they would somehow trigger their memories of before this whole thing happened, or they would more quickly learn to continue on without them. Gansey might not have been the most observant person all of the time, but he did know that there were still feelings and chemistry lingering between his two friends. Even without all of their history, surely they could still make one another happy.

“So, Adam…” Gansey said curiously.

“Oh, whatever,” Ronan said, all acid and venom. “Fucking Blue was there, too. Why don’t you ask _her_ for a report?”

Gansey’s eyebrows were raising before he could think if that was the response he wanted to give. He hadn’t expected that information, and surely he would be seeking out additional insights from Blue – tomorrow, though; once he’d had sleep and coffee and time to think through his words. As of right now, Gansey had no interest or reason to question Ronan about Blue’s presence at the garage. He did, however, have a continued interest in what was going on with Ronan and Adam. It looked like something, maybe felt like it, and Gansey wanted to know if it needed a nudge.

Ignoring Ronan’s last remark, Gansey said, “So, you and Adam have been spending plenty of time together, then? Getting to know each other?”

Like his tone, Ronan’s glare now required a warning for hazardous materials. “Can you just let it go?” he snarled.

And well, no. In fact, Gansey had an entire folder full of letters of appreciation from museums to indicate that he had never in his life let anything go. He understood, empirically, that certain quests needed to be surrendered, but how could he do it when warning signs of the impossible looked the same as hints to try harder?

But of course, friends were not the same as so-called unsolvable riddles; they did not respond well to being pulled at and scrutinized harder. Especially not Ronan. So, instead of pressing the issue, Gansey said, “I’m sorry for prying. I suppose that what goes on between you and Adam isn’t my business.”

Ronan sighed and ran a hand over his scalp. “Fuck tonight,” he said, which was, adjusting for Ronan, nearly an apology.

Gansey nodded his understanding, or his agreement, depending how Ronan decided to take it. Either way, it meant that they were okay again. Gansey checked that the cap on the glue was tightened thoroughly, that the roofs were straight, that his shoes hadn’t been glued to the floor; Ronan gulped down his soda.

Finally, after what Gansey felt had been an acceptable period of peace, he said, “By the way, do you happen to know if Adam’s done the Calculus? I can’t seem to get through number 19.” He held his breath. It was devious, awful, but Gansey did not need help with number 19. Not this week. But last week, he’d asked Ronan this same thing, if Adam had done the homework, and though Gansey hadn’t glued himself to the floor tonight, he’d glued himself days ago to this hope, this puzzle of how to get Adam and Ronan to remember.

But Ronan didn’t react to his words in any way beyond a scowl that said that Gansey was pushing his limits again. “How the fuck should I know?” Ronan replied. “Just look it up in the back, man.”  
Gansey let out his breath in a wave of disappointment. Ronan’s words overlapped his response from last time, but not the right way, not enough. Now, Ronan gave no comment on Adam’s studiousness and tendency to finish assignments early. He didn’t even give any indication that he remembered Gansey asking about it before, which was a new detail that Gansey would have to examine later. Unless it was just too specific to expect Ronan to remember Gansey asking after a Calculus problem by number. He just didn’t know.

Pushing all that aside, Gansey took the opportunity with Ronan still standing there to inform him, “You don’t learn anything by looking up the answer, you know.”

Ronan shrugged; he didn’t care. If Ronan cared enough to know how to do something, his efforts tended to yield results. “Isn’t there a solutions manual?” he asked, bringing his leather bands to his mouth. “Or buy the fucking teacher’s edition. Tons of shit in there.”

Gansey was not impressed by the suggestion. “I doubt that will help me right now.” Not that he needed it right now, of course. But if he did, he certainly wouldn’t be able to get ahold of one quickly enough to be useful.

There was a quality to Ronan’s smirk that meant he was taking this all as a joke. “I could dream you one,” he said.

Gansey laughed. “Yes, I’m sure answering every question with profanity would help my grades.”

“Your loss, man,” Ronan said. “It could have been something really special.”

“Hmm,” Gansey hummed in amusement. “Do you do scrapbooks?”

A scoff. “Sure,” Ronan said. “But only for Parrish.”

“Oh,” Gansey said, which was honestly not what he’d meant to say. By all indications, including Ronan’s look of embarrassment, this was just another instance of habit taking over, saying Adam’s name because he would have in the past. But even so, for Gansey’s self-stated goal of getting Adam and Ronan back to where they were, this was a good step, and it shouldn’t be ruined by his awkwardness. The best possible thing he could have done would be to act like that comment was nothing out of the ordinary. Apparently, that wasn’t so easy.

“I didn’t mean –” Ronan started.

“No,” Gansey assured him quickly. “No, no. I understand.”

Ronan replied with a suspicious look, a look that said that he didn’t truly believe that Gansey understood. “I haven’t made any scrapbooks,” he muttered.

“Of course,” Gansey agreed. “Although, if you wanted to, I’m sure Blue would be happy to share her sustainably-crafted embellishments.”

Ronan’s scowl was only a few degrees shy of lethal. “Fuck you,” he said, because that was like breathing for him. “Just for that, I’m signing the both of you up for a class as your Christmas present.”

“Great,” Gansey said. “I’ll sign you and Adam up, too.”

Ronan’s expression edged closer to death. “Fine,” he said through gritted teeth. Then he headed towards his bedroom.

“Ronan, wait,” Gansey called after him. He didn’t particularly care to win this battle of the wills.

Ronan turned slowly back to him. “I’m waiting,” he said.

Gansey hadn’t actually thought Ronan was going to stop. “Well, listen,” he said, cautious for fear of losing Ronan’s attention. “I know all of this is a lot. So, if you ever want to talk. About Adam, I mean. Or – or Noah. Or anything.”

Ronan’s expression went hard, which was exactly what it took for Gansey to realize that it had gotten softer to begin with. For a second just now, Ronan had been contemplating opening up. And then he’d changed his mind.

“Ronan?” Gansey said.

“Yeah,” Ronan said. Derided. “Sure. And then you want to braid each other’s hair?”

Gansey let out a helpless little laugh as he looked pointedly at Ronan’s shaved scalp. Still, he had to say, “I’m pretty sure Blue would call that sexism.”

Ronan was dismissive. “Yeah, okay, dudes can do braids, whatever. I promise, if I ever grow my hair out again, you are welcome to braid it.”

Actually, Gansey had meant the implication that talking things out equated them to girls, but he didn't think he could say that now. It was entirely mind-boggling to think about how many layers there were to a topic like this one – you sidestepped one offense and realized you’d landed in another. Or maybe that was just Gansey; as he’d learned over the past several years, no number of private schools or congressional dinners could teach him to anticipate another person’s perspective.

But this was a conversation that Blue would enjoy, and Ronan would not. So, Gansey simply pointed and said, “I will hold you to that.”

Ronan laughed freely, and that was a magnificent sign. Even better, he took two steps towards Gansey, no longer conversing from a leaving standpoint. “Careful, Gansey,” he said. “You’ll make your girlfriend jealous.”

“Oh, I’m sure she’ll braid your hair, too,” Gansey assured him.

“Not if she wants to keep both hands,” Ronan replied.

Gansey hummed, allowing that end to the discussion. “But really,” he said, “I want you to know you’re not alone. I’m here.”

“Aww,” Ronan said, not sounding at all appreciative, “that’s real sweet, man. I mean, I’m so touched. I’ve got you for all my hair-braiding needs!”

Gansey huffed. “That is not what I meant.”

Ronan reached out and ruffled his hair, apparently immune to Gansey trying to swat him off. “You don’t have to worry, okay?” Ronan said. “I told you I’m good.”

Gansey raised an eyebrow. “Did you, though?”

Ronan shrugged. “I’m good,” he said. “There. Happy?”

“It can change,” Gansey persisted. “I know you say you’re fine, but maybe you won’t be tomorrow, or next week, or an hour from now… I’m just saying, you should know that you can come to me.”

Ronan sighed and sunk to the floor beside Gansey. “Gansey,” he said very seriously, “you are one of the best friends I’ve ever had, but you need to have some fucking faith in me. I’m not the same person you had to keep a watch on.” Even if Gansey didn’t know that, it would have been self-evident; the old Ronan would never have been able to stomach being so painfully earnest.

Gansey smiled tightly at him. “Force of habit,” he said. “You’ll forgive me.”

Ronan ran a hand over his scalp and said, like he had to force the words out, " _I'm trying._ " Gansey knew that he didn’t mean he was trying to forgive.

“I know you’re trying,” he said. “But I also know that there’s only so much a person can take, and this week has been giving you a lot of it.”

“I can’t be worrying that I’m going to stomp your fucking toes every time I take a step forward,” Ronan warned him. “I need space.”

“Okay,” Gansey agreed. “I think you’ve earned that.”

Ronan shot him a look showcasing how utterly unimpressed he was with the concept of having to _earn_ the right to space. But he didn’t offer any other objection, and instead, rapped twice on the floor and got to his feet. “Can I go sleep now?” he asked. “Or was there some other _pressing matter_ you needed to go over?”

Gansey shook his head. He would deny it to his grave, but sometimes, Ronan’s mockery was a relief to hear. “By all means.”

“Thanks,” Ronan said sarcastically, which was pretty much the only way he ever thanked anyone. “Night, old man.”

“Good night, Ronan,” Gansey replied. Ronan headed into his bedroom, and Gansey sat in silence for a few minutes following. He’d told Ronan that he’d give him space, but the truth was, he’d pretty much committed to doing the opposite that same day. Gansey’s plans to get Ronan and Adam back together were the opposite of giving space; they were meddling, and they were presuming that Adam and Ronan couldn’t work this out for themselves. What was he getting so worried over? It had only been five days.

And yet, it had only been five days. There was no information on whether this would get worse – repeat or expand as time went on. Wouldn’t it be better if it were fixed as soon as possible? Shouldn’t they be doing everything they could to get things back to normal? The only problem was, they’d sort of been dropped in a labyrinth with this whole thing, and there were no road signs to suggest which steps would bring them to safety and which led to disaster. And like any group of people who weren’t sharing all their information, they had no hope of agreeing on a path.

Gansey pushed himself up from the floor. He needed to talk to Blue.

By the time he remembered that Blue was currently mad at him for somewhat implying that she should do all the hard work on _his_ plan, the phone was already ringing against his ear. The realization hit him sharp and swift, a kick to the chest. His brain started screaming through escape protocols. _Hang up the phone, hang up the phone, abort, abort._

Orla answered. “Awfully late for a phone call, don’t you think?” She sounded somewhere between judgmental and joking, and Gansey had the distinct impression that she knew it was him on the other end of the call.

“May I speak to Blue, please?” he said before he could take the time to think of something better to say.

Orla sighed. It was the sort of sigh that seemed distinctly practiced, and Gansey had no doubt that she’d talked many men into all sorts of things she’d prefaced with that sigh. “It’s just, Blue is so busy tearing down the establishment… But I’m sure _I_ could keep you entertained.” She spoke in a pouty voice that, again, Gansey was sure had worked on many men before. Gansey was also sure that Blue would never use a tone like that, and knowing that she wouldn’t, he couldn’t seem to find a tantalizing thing about it.

“If you don’t mind interrupting her, I’d really like to speak with Blue,” Gansey said – firm yet polite, just the way he’d been taught.

Orla let out another sigh, this one of disappointment. “Just a minute,” she muttered. “Blue!” she hollered loudly and close enough to the phone that Gansey winced. There was no hollered response, at least not that Gansey heard, but there was some muffled grumbling from Orla. Her voice disappeared momentarily, replaced by the improbable and unidentifiable background track of 300 Fox Way. Clattering bangs, like from cookware, but heard before with the kitchen empty; traveling voices whose owners Gansey had never met, words that had to be misheard; from somewhere, music that seamlessly couldn’t decide what instrument it was being played on.

Then, like a whisper of sunshine: Blue’s voice. It was just a hint of it – her tone and her incandescent rhythm – but it was Blue, without words. Gansey could listen to just this for the rest of his life, except that that would mean never hearing what she had to say. Gansey daydreamed sometimes about Blue’s chin on his shoulder, her lips spilling plans for global salvation into his ear. It was not a fantasy that he could live without.

Blue’s voice – and Orla’s – got louder. Not quite loud enough to be decipherable, but the tones were getting tense. Then Gansey heard Orla say, very distinctly, “Well, maybe you shouldn’t have your boyfriend calling at all hours of the night.” He was desperately, selfishly glad that he hadn’t been witness to whatever had led to this point in the conversation.

“Why not?” Blue said, accusatory. “It’s the only time you ever talk to any of yours.”

“Um, excuse you –” Orla started, before she was interrupted by the sound of a door slamming. “Ugh!” she screeched, muffled by the door.

The dread flooded back in. There were times, of course, when Blue was the only person that Gansey could imagine wanting to talk to, when the whole world was terrible and only Blue was not. After an argument with Orla, though, and with unresolved words still between them, Gansey did not look forward to what Blue would have to say to him.

But Blue did not pick up the phone immediately. Gansey could hear her, just slightly; deep breaths for a few seconds. Finally, there was a rustling sound as the phone was picked up and Blue said, so softly, “Gansey?”

In spite of his lingering nerves, Gansey felt a wash of relief at just the simple fact of being on the phone with her. “Hi,” he said, just as softly. “I’m sorry for earlier.”

Blue laughed, just air. “That was an eternity ago.”

Gansey sunk onto his bed. How awful, he thought, that Blue’s long day had played to his advantage. “Ronan told me what happened at the garage,” he said.

“Hmm,” Blue commented. “Did he tell you about the flirting?”

Gansey frowned. “With Adam?”

“Who else?” Blue scoffed.

“Right,” Gansey acknowledged. He plucked his journal off of the bedside table, with plans to find a particular note on the side of a page. The left side, he thought.

“There was definitely flirting, that’s all I’m saying,” Blue continued. “So, I guess I see what you mean or whatever. They’d be happier if – well.”

“Not to say that anyone needs a relationship to be happy,” Gansey anticipated.

“Of course not,” Blue agreed. “But Ronan and Adam…”

“I know,” Gansey said. One-handed, he attempted to affix a sticky tab to a different note that he wanted to look into another time. “You just want them to have as much happiness as possible. I do, too.”

“Mm,” Blue said. “I just don’t know how.”

Gansey took a breath and set his journal aside. “I understand,” he told her. “That is, your concerns about the best way – or what we should do – I understand now.”

Blue let out a breath, slow and weightless. “Thank you,” she said.

Gansey smiled without thinking to. It was a nice sort of smile: the sort that felt right at home over a candlelit dinner. “I always want to be on the same page with you,” he confided. It felt enormous to say.

There was a pause, and then Blue said, quietly, “I don’t.” Another pause. Finally, she said as if she was struggling with the words, “If we’re always on the same side, neither of us will ever learn anything.”

“Oh,” Gansey said, because of course, he hadn’t thought of that. It was terrible to have an argument with Blue, but in a way, he appreciated that it had brought them to this conversation, this new peace. “All right,” he said. “Then I hope that we aren’t always on the same side, but we always take the time to understand.”

“Me too,” Blue whispered. It felt enormous to hear.

Gansey laid back against his pillows. “So,” he said, “is there anything else you’d like to disagree over tonight?”

Blue laughed softly. Beautifully. “Do you want to rehash the Ronan-Adam argument?”

Gansey glanced over at Ronan’s closed door and thought about the conversation they’d just had. “Do you think it’s wrong that we keep talking about them?”

“I don’t know,” Blue admitted. “Maybe. I’m not sure the same rules for privacy apply in a situation like this.”

“Hmm,” Gansey considered. He took off his glasses and set them on top of his journal. “I feel uncertain.”

Blue made a noise of understanding. “I know it didn’t work out so well today,” she said, “but do you want to talk about it after school tomorrow? And both of us will listen?”

The corner of Gansey’s mouth tipped up. “I’d like that,” he said.

“Okay,” Blue replied. There was a hesitation in her quiet voice, something else she wanted to say. Gansey let her hold the line quiet, building up nerve or breaking down words.

“There’s something else,” she said at length. “I wanted to let you know.” Another pause, this one of a significantly different quality than the last. This one was tense, somehow, but Gansey didn’t think he’d done anything to trigger that. Blue said, furtively, “Not now.”

Gansey pushed his shoes off his feet as he thought this over. He wondered, idly, what it was that Blue couldn’t tell him over the phone. Not idly. He was going to be turning this over for hours. “Okay,” he said anyways.

“It’s nothing,” Blue said, because she could hear it in his voice, always. She knew. “It’s –” Her voice dropped to a hiss. “ _They’re meddling._ ”

Gansey blinked up at the blurred beams of the ceiling far above him. “Oh.” This made sense, actually, because they’d invited Blue’s family into this in the first place. They’d presented Maura with a puzzle, which was essentially the same as presenting the entirety of 300 Fox Way with a puzzle. If Gansey had been in their position, he would have kept investigating on his own, too. In fact, he _had_ kept investigating other people’s puzzles before; it had led to quite a few of his adolescent adventures.

“Yeah,” Blue said uncomfortably. Gansey could imagine perfectly the scrunched-up face she was making. “We can talk about it more tomorrow. But that’s what it is.”

“Don’t worry,” Gansey told her, which probably ought to have felt horribly hypocritical to say. Gansey spent too much of his time worrying, and he didn’t plan to or know how to stop that. And right now, there was plenty of justification for Blue to worry. He sighed. “You’re so in the middle of this.”

Blue laughed; every time, it felt like the space in Gansey’s lungs was expanding. “What else is new?” she joked.

“You’re incredible,” Gansey said, because the feeling of it sat heavy on his chest, and his eyes were closed, and the air received it so easily.

“I asked for something new,” Blue admonished, but she didn’t say it like a joke; she said it like it was the only way she could take the compliment.

“Sorry,” Gansey replied sleepily. “I’ll do better tomorrow.”

Even without seeing it, Gansey could picture her smile. “That’s okay,” she said. “I’ll take old news, too.”

Gansey sat up halfway. “You know, there is this newspaper article from –”

Blue interrupted him with her electrifying laugh. “Goodnight, Gansey,” she said, a touch of affection.

Gansey sunk back onto his pillows, a smile on his face that didn’t even realize it was there. “Goodnight, Jane.” They hung up the phone, and Gansey slept.


End file.
